
I 1 



■'s 



■^ 



! 




JAMES H. CATHEY. 



THE GENESIS OF LINCOLN. 



BY 



JAMES H. CATHEY. 



Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. 



*'r AM GLAD YOU HAVE UNDERTAKEN THE 'l.INCOI,N 
MYSTERY', IF SUCH IT CAN BE STYLED. I BE- 
LIEVE ALL THAT I HAVE HEARD." 

— The late Col.Jno. D. Cameron. 



LIBRfRYnf congress! 
Twe Copies Received 



fEB 8 1904 

I Cop 



I Copyright Entry 



COPY S 



XJferNo. 






olnl 



aft*- 



Entered according to Act of Congr. 



ess in the year 1S99 



JAMAIS H. CATHKY 

In the Office of the I^ibrarian of Congre. 

at Washington, D. C 



RIGHTS RESERVED.) 



^^ He was^ in the most significant way^ a \ 

man who embodied all the best qtialities of ] 

unspoiled middle-class men^ j 

Henry Ward Beecher. \ 



M !■''*' 



If 



^^The Characteristic which struck 7ne most 
was his superabiiiida^ice of common sensed 
Chauncey M. Depew. 



Y ^ o 



r 



^ 






^ 
^ 



v> 




o 

z: 



^ 



^ 



^ 5i- -iir "^ 



Fold-out 
Placeholder 




-f * * s *> 



Fold-out 
Placeholder 



lis fold-out is being digitized, and will hP in 



Qor+oH 



^^The people in this country — all the old 
people with whom I talked — were familiar 
with the girl as Nancy Hanks?'' 

Capt. E. Everett. 



2)e&icatton» 



TO THE FUTURE BIOGRAPHER WHO MAY SEARCH FOR 
AI,I, THE FACTS, AND THE COMING GENERA- 
TIONS WHO MAY WANT THE WHOI,E TRUTH, 
THIS TRADITION OF ABRAHAM I,INCOI,N'S 
ORIGIN, IS SINCEREI,Y DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. Page. 

1 AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE 25 

2 A COMPARATIVE STUDY 81 

3 ABE LINCOLN'S HALF-BROTHER 104 

4 ABRAHAM ENLOE 122 

5 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141 

6 THE ENLOES 162 

7 WISDOM AND PROPHECY 178 

8 ADDENDA 186 



INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS 



Page. 

1. JAMES H. CATHEY FRONTISPIECE, l- 

2. SAWINOOKIH 134 

3. COI.. WM. H.THOMAS 80 

4. THE OI,D ENI,OE FARMHOUSE 34 

5. ABRAHAM I,INCOI,N 84 

6. WESI^EY ENI,OE 84 

7. MRS. JUI,IA ENI,OE BIRD... 68 

8. MISS EI.IZA ENI,OE 96 

9. MRS. A. J. PATTON 162 

10. MRS. FI,OYD 164 

11. WM. A. ENI,OE 16S 

12. J. FRANK ENI,OE 174 

13. ROBT. WAI^KER ENI^OE loo 

14. A. I.INCOI.N 92 

15. WESI.EY ENI,OE 9» 

16. WESIvEY M. ENIvOE 62 

17. CAPT. WM. A. ENI,OE 168, 170 

18. ABRAHAM I,INCOI.N— BY Bral>Y 222 

19. \VESI,EY M. ENI,OE. 223 

20. ABRAHAM I^INCGlvN— By Brady- 230 

21. WESI^EY ENI,OE 231 

22. JOHN E. BURTON 248 



FOREWORD. 



Generous reader, traverse with me the ensu- 
ing pages and they shall open to you a "sealed 
book." They shall lead along the neglected 
path of unwritten history and reveal to you, 
with care, an interesting fact in the story of 
America's most remarkable man. 

They may tear the veil of popular modesty 
only to discover the naked truth. 

The truth cannot hurt the living or the 
dead. 

It is often a good popular nervine to 
disturb the commonplace with the heroic, 
the romantic, the tragic. 

It is better still to replace popular shadow 
of doubt with popular sunshine of fidelity. 

It is said, "there is a skeleton in every 
closet and that must not be disturbed." There 



14 

is no avoiding it with individuals or aggrega- 
tions. 

There should be no attempt to avoid explor- 
ing the dimmest recesses in the life of a real 
hero. The life and acts of a hero are not cir- 
cumscribed by narrow lines. The atmosphere 
that belongs to him at once becomes free and 
self-imparting. Each and every phase of him 
is of theintensest interest to humanity; at 
once becomes, and of right should become, a 
common heritage. 

Tradition is the musty old closet in which 
has been stowed for thousands of years the 
disjoined skeletons of history. These should 
be hauled forth, articulated, clothed with the 
.flesh, and animated with the blood of the living 
•truth. 

There is one narrative of human events in 
which there is no evidence of a traditional 
closet — the Bible. In this ancient bundle of 
truth "a spade is called a spade." 

If the " man after God's own heart" took his 



15 

fellow's life that he might obtain his wife, this 
book says so in so many blunt w^ords. If the 
'' father of the faithful" drove his bond-woman 
'and their illegitimate son into the wilderness 
to die, to please his irate wife, such is the rec- 
ord. 

But it is not our purpose here to try to recon- 
cile moral incongruities. It should be suffi- 
cient for one to reflect that our world is inhab- 
ited by men ; that it has been so and doubt- 
less will. 

Yielding to a moral cowardice— a feeling 
that recoils at the thought of making public 
one's own faults— historians have, with a few 
refreshing exceptions, cast aside one-half the 
events of the world. 

The custom to pass unnoticed the vices, 
which make up the larger moiety of the man, 
has lead them to an immoderate exaggeration 

of his virtues. 

To these, and a false notion of taste, is trace- 
able the failure to record volumes without 



i6 

number of the most thrilling history. Here 
is the try sting-place of truant tradition and 
family lore. Here, too, is a fruitful nursery 
of individual and national hypocrisy. 

The recording of the good, only, in the life 
of a person or a nation, is a tale half told, a 
song half sung — often a wondrous tale, an epic 
song. 

The statue is not complete till the sculptor 
has watched the last minute characteristic of 
the original follow the errand of his chisel. 
The flower does not show forth all its deli- 
cate tints in rounded splendor till its last ten- 
der petal is full blown. 

Cicero tells us that the first and fundamen- 
tal law of history is, " That it should neither 
dare to say anything that is false or fear to say 
anything that is true, nor give any just suspi- 
cion of favor or disaffection." 

This is the standard of the true historian. 
Apropos to this, Edward Everett Hale says : 
" The history of mankind is made up of the 



17 

Ijiographies of men." If this be true, Cicero's 
standard will apply to biography with double 
force. 

The scriptural narrative traces the lineage of 
Christ along a solid chain of forty-two genera- 
tions. If the sacred chronicler essa3^edto trace, 
without trepidation, so remote an origin as that 
of the divine Christ, why should one tremble or 
hesitate to inquire after the beginning of a 
great, though finite man ? The day of miracles 
has passed these eighteen hundred years, and 
something cannot come of nothing. 

It is the historical teaching that Abraham 
Lincoln was virtually " without ancestors, fel- 
lows, or successors." Whether this is a delu- 
sion it does not concern us to argue. He came 
into the world, and the world understood him 
not. 

It is, therefore, the sole purpose of this little 
book to present a tradition tending to prove 
that this wonderful man was not without an- 
cestors. His mother was Nancy Hanks. If 



i8 

he was the son of a worthy sire the world is 
entitled to know who that sire was ; when, 
where and how he lived ; whence he came and 
what his characteristics. 

For ninety years, or thereabout, from the 
time it is said Abraham Lincoln was begotten 
or born, as the case was, and the breeze 
occurred in the Enloe home, there has sub- 
sisted among the honest people at the center 
of authority a lively tradition that Abraham, 
the head of the Enloe family, was Lincoln's 
father by Nancy Hanks, who occupied the po- 
sition of servant-girl in the Knloe household. 

So confident and persistent have the keepers 
of this old testimony to the origin of Abraham 
Lincoln been, when plied with interrogatories, 
that they knew what they were talking about,, 
that there was no opening for superstition, and 
the most one who was inclined to be skeptical 
could do was to wonder and say nothing. 

One might hug his incredulity by imagin- 
ing that the people who fathered the strange 



19 

accounts of Nancy Hanks and Abraham Knloe 
and a child, and the wonderful story of the 
striking personal likeness of Abraham Lincoln 
and Wesley Enloe,are illiterate, fanatical folk 
who have conjured up a fragmentary fable, 
how and for what they know not ; but this 
incredulity is all cleared away, like fog before 
the sunbeams, when one learns that the custo- 
dians of the "Lincoln tradition" are numbered 
by the scores and hundreds of the first people- 
men and women— of Western North Carolina. 
Ladies as well as gentlemen, not only of the 
immediate section, but also of distant States, 
visiting at Asheville and other places of resort 
in our mountains, finding a thread of the tra- 
dition, they pulled until their curiosity, at 
least, becoming excited, they visited Wesley 
Enloe, the al'eged half-brother of Abraham 
Lincoln, in his hospitable mountain home, 
were fil'ed with amazement, and went away 
convinced that the tradition was wrought in 
cords that could not easily be broken. 



20 

People who were familiar witli Mr. Lincoln's 
history, or who knew him personally, were 
struck with the strange physical resemblance 
on first sight, and then watched a series of 
impersonations of Lincoln, as they studied the 
features and noted the varying postures of 
the person of Wesley Enloe. 

The remarkable tradition, with its flesh and 
blood corroboration, was from time to time 
engaged to be written up by journalists, law- 
yers and clergymen of culture and standing, 
but nothing more than a hasty, desultory 
newspaper article was the result. The people 
over a very limited area of population were 
being made conversant with the valuable tra- 
dition, and its worthy repositors were, one by 
one, stepping from the earthly stage. It was 
plainly apparent that in a very few years the 
old generation would be gone, and a truth of 
American history, by sheer neglect, would be 
forever lost. 

We felt our incapacity to undertake sa 



21 

responsible a task. We were conscious of the 
delicacy of the undertaking, but the implicit, 
unquestioned faith which we had in the truth- 
fulness of the tradition gave us a courage 
which shrank not from the most formidable- 
looking anti-traditional hobgoblin. 

Thus emboldened we set to work to gather the 
odds and ends of our folk-history. We resolved 
at the outset that we would interrogate none 
but the most trustworthy — people who were in 
the best position to give a reason for the faith 
that was in them, together with the story of 
the relatives of the distinguished subject of 
our memoir. This we have, in every instance, 
done. In 1895 the writer conceived the idea 
of writing a newspaper or magazine article for 
the simple purpose of making known the tra- 
dition to the public generally, hoping thereby 
to attract the attention of the enterprising 
journalist, and after that the enduring chron- 
icler; but private concerns interfered, and our 
purpose was frustrated for the time. Luckily, 



22 

however, we then obtained the statements of 
some very aged gentlemen whose testimony 
will herein appear, and which is of the most 
important character, who have since died. 

We have been extremely fortunate in enlist- 
ing the co-operation of various good and often 
distinguished citizens in our search for data. 
Some of these have passed away since we began 
our first investigation. Those who are "up 
and able to be about " are the venerable half- 
brother of our illustrious subject, Mr. Wesley 
M. Enloe, and his nephew, Capt. Wm. A. Bnloe ; 
Dr. Isaac N. Knloe, of Illinois, and Mr. Sanl. 
G. Enloe, of Missouri ; Mr. J. Frank Enloe, of 
North Carolina, and Mrs. Floyd, of Texas, son 
and neice of Wesley M. Enloe ; Mr. H. J. Beck, 
of Ocona Lufta, N. C. ; C. A. Ragland, Esq., 
of Stockton, Mo. ; Mr. Joseph A. Collins, of 
Clyde, N. C. ; Capt. E. Everett, and Mr. D. K. 
Collins, of Bryson City, N. C. ; the vener- 
able Philip Dills, Hon. William A. Dills, and 
Mr. Sion T. Early, of Dillsboro, N. C. ; and 
Captain James W. Terrell, of Webster, N. C. 



23 

To each of these gentlemen, and to Mrs. 
Floyd, the writer wishes to express his most 
sincere thanks. He has been most deeply 
touched by the generous and always courteous 
response his appeals have met from each and 
all of them, and his obligation to them can 
only be enhanced by the increase of the im- 
portance of the historical truth as it goes into 
the world fresh from their honest and dis- 
interested lips. In voicing the memory of 
hundreds, these several individuals wall, for the 
-first time, bring face to face with the world a 
fact that is worth the world's while. 

Tradition once said: "Premature pangs 
seized the mother of Napoleon while she was 
at church. She hurried home, barely reach- 
ing her apartment w^hen the heroic babe was 
delivered, without accoucheur, on a piece of 
tapestry inw^rought with an effigy of iVchilles." 
Gradually becoming credulous, history sa}'S 
now: "This probably occurred." 

There is not current a tradition of the 



24 

Corsican that is entitled to more credit than 

the North Carolina tradition of the Immortal 

Rail-splitter. We therefore give it to you 

and the future historian, as you have it, in 

modest but faithful form. 

James H. Cathky. 
Sylva, N. C. 



I 



CHAPTER I. 
AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE. 



In the year 1444, the story goes, Charles 
VII. of France, a man of forty, became sud- 
denly and deeply enamored of a young French- 
woman of not more than half his years, but 
more than twice his tact ; and one of the 
brightest, wittiest, and most beautiful of 



women. 



For six long years this nymph of grace and 
mischief kept King Charles wound tightly in 
her web of irresistible cliarms. 

She caused him to neglect his most excel- 
lent consort, the queen, and her children ; ta 
place implacable hatred in the heart of Louis, 
the king's son, toward his father. 

She beguiled him to provide her w4th regal 



26 

palaces throughout his reahn ; adorn her with 
the most costly apparel and bedeck her with 
the rarest jewels ; to have her attended by long 
retinues of liveried servants and trained court- 
iers. She presented the king with bright and 
beautiful children; he adored Agnes Sorel 
with the wild intensity of a youthful lover, 
and the proud court of France, on bended 
knee, made obeisance to her. 

At the end of the six years she suddenly 
died. The affair was first the property of gos- 
sip, then of tradition. 

For many years the story of Charles and 
Agnes was passed from mouth to mouth. 

Tales of her exquisite beauty and charms 
were familiar to prince and peasant. The se- 
cret of her beauty and attractions was said to 
have been her blond hair and teeth of rarest 
pearl, adorned at her will by the most bewitch- 
ing smile. 

iVs the years continued and the world heark- 
ened to these seemingly extravagant reports, 



1 



27 

there might have been seen significant tossings 
of the head, and there might have been heard 
the mnrmurings of an incredulous public. 
But in the year 1777, three hundred and twen- 
ty-seven years after Charles the Seventh had 
gently laid Agnes in her tomb at Loches, it 
was decided by some ecclesiastics that her 
monument was in the way and that it must be 
removed. The monument was accordingly 
torn down, the marble slab was raised, and at 
a distance of a few feet in the ground the 
workman struck a coffin, the lid of which was 
taken away, then another of lead, which, when 
opened, disclosed a third of iron, inside of 
which they found a jaw filled with rows of 
shapely teeth, and long, flowing braids of blond 
hair soft as velvet. Since this it is said that 
no Frenchman has dared doubt the popular 
story of the personal beauty of Agnes Sorel. 

This story of the king's mistress is a demon- 
stration of the substantial truth of any deep- 
rooted tradition. 



28 

Illustrated thus tradition becomes what in 
fact it always is, a loud panegyric to the col- 
lective veracity of mankind. From out the 
shafted grave of human charity and the iron 
casket of canonization shall come forth the 
teeth and tresses of convincing testimony. 

Tradition is the principal means by which 
plain people preserve a knowledge of events. 
History is made up of tradition. A very small 
percentage of the happenings of the world is 
recorded, the historian being an eye-witness. 
Even those events that are recorded when they 
take place are anticipated, being of the most 
important character, and become the subjects 
of a score of chroniclers, all embalming the 
Same substantial facts, but immersed in the 
peculiar oils and spices of each individual 
chronicler. 

Many of the most delicate and yet indispen- 
sable notes of history that tell of the real 
character of people, savage and savant, come 
down the decades by word of mouth. They 



29 

are passed from ear to ear in silent pride and 
childish confidence around the cozy firesides 
of neighborhoods and states. 

It is the inestimable and inalienable right 
of memory. 

Deprive, if it were possible, a people of their 
traditions, and you will rob memory of the 
tenderer half of its trophies. You will trans- 
form joyous youth into sober manhood in a 
single night, and turn the sunny plain of the 
aged into a wailing desert in a single day. 

Every long-established and generally ac- 
cepted tradition bears upon its face the author- 
ity of truth. The popular gaze melts away 
the mist, and popular scrutiny finds out the 
facts; popular judgment weighs these facts, 
•and popular honesty discloses them. 

The birth and many of the events in the 
life of Christ were for a long while confided 
to tradition's sacred keeping. Now that they 
are written in books and chiseled in marble, 
who doubts the tale of the shepherds and ad- 
missions of the wise men ? 



30 

The birth and life of Christ carry with them 
divine authorization. So does any truth. 

The following tradition is more than ninety 
years old. Its center of authority is Swain 
and neighboring counties of Western North 
Carolina : 

Some time in the early 3^ears of the century^ 
variously given 1803, ^^^5^ 1806, and 1808^ 
there was living in the family of Abraham 
Enloe, of Ocona Lufta, N. C, a young woman 
whose name was Nancy Hanks. This young 
woman remained in the household, faring as 
one of the family until, it becoming apparent 
that she was in a state of increase, and there 
appearing signs of the approach of domestic 
infelicity, she was quietly removed, at the in- 
stance of Abraham Enloe, to Kentucky. 

This is the most commonly accepted version 
of the event. 

Another pretty current construction of the 
story is that when Abraham Enloe emigrated 
from Rutherford county, there came with his 



31 

family a servant-g-irl whose name was Nancy 
Hanks, and who, after a time, gave birth to a 
boy child which so much resembled the legit- 
imate heirs of Abraham Enloe, that their 
mother warmly objected to the presence of so 
unpleasant a reminder, and' the embarrassed 
husband had the young child and its mother 
spirited to Kentucky. These are the two uni- 
versally accepted versions of the one thor- 
oughly accredited fact. 

The tradition subsists on four salient and 
perfectly conversant points : 

First. — That in the early years of the cen- 
tury a young woman took up her abode at 
Abraham Enloe's, in the capacity of hired 
girl, whose name was Nancy Hanks. 

Second. That this same girl, Nancy 

Hanks, while living at Abraham Enloe's, be- 
came enceinte ; or entangled in an embarrass- 
ment in which her illegitimate child was the 
unconscious instigator. 

Third. — That the wife of Abraham Enloe, 



32 

believing that her husband was the father of 
Nancy Hanks's child, and being unwilling to 
countenance what she conceived to be a re- 
proach upon herself and children, demanded 
the disconnection of Nancy Hanks from liei 
household. 

Fourth. — That Abraham Enloe heeded the 
demand of his wife and forthwith effected the 
transportation of Nancy Hanks and her off- 
spring to the State of Kentucky. 

" Wherefore she said unto Abraham, cast 
out the bondwoman and her son, for the son 
of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my 
son, even with Isaac. 

And the thing was very grievous in Abra- 
ham's sight because of his son. 

And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be 
grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and 
because of thy bondwoman ; in all that Sarah 
hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice ; 
for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 

And also of the son of the bondwoman will 
I make a nation» because he is thy seed. 



33 

And Abraham rose up early in the morning 
and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave 
it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and 
the child, and sent her away ; and she departed 
and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. 

And the water was spent in the bottle, and 
she cast the child under one of the shrubs. 
And she went and sat her down over against 
him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot ; for 
she said let me not see the death of the child. 
And she sat over against him and lifted up 
her voice and wept. 

And God heard the voice of the lad ; and 
the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven 
and said unto her : What aileth thee, Hagar ? 
fear not ; for God has heard the voice of the 
lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad and 
hold him in thine hand ; for I will make him 
a great nation. 

And God opened her eyes and she saw a 
well of water ; and she went and filled the bot- 
de with water and gave the lad drink. 



34 

And God was with the lad, and he grew and- 
dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. 
And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran." 

This is the entire beautiful and pathetic 
story of Hagar and her son. As one reads it 
how much of it seems analogous to poor 
Nancy Hanks and the account of Abraham 
Ivincoln's childhood. 

But if men and women living under kindred' 
circumstances a little more than three-quarters - 
of a century since are as much entitled to be 
believed as Moses, the drama of Abraham 
and Sarah and their bondw^oman Hagar, and 
her child, in this tradition, is again enacted" 
with strange fidelity. Bereft of the tender 
guardianship of either father or mother, and 
thrown adrift on the cold charity of the world,. 
Nancy Hanks, in what particular manner is 
unknown at this distant day, sought shelter 
under the kindly roof of Abraham Enloe. 

She was young, doubtless yet in her teens.. 
The bloom of youth had not faded from her 




THE OLD HOUSE. 

The Residence of Wesley Enloe, and the House of 
Abraham Enloe when Nanc}- Hanks was Transported 
to Kentucky. 



35 

'brow. The expression of native intelligence, 
saddened by scenes of poverty and pain, shone 
from her eye. In her voice ran a tone of mel- 
ancholy, betraying a life of sorrow and neglect. 

It was a red-letter day for her when she was 
welcomed by the family into the comfortable 
home of Abraham Enloe. Never had the sun 
shone brighter or the birds sung sweeter to 
her than on that day. She drank afresh life's 
invigorating elixir, and dreamed for the first 
time of some of its most pleasant realities. 

Her face became changed ; there was now 
no mingled look of weariness and woe, only a 
faint trace of the sad. Her eye was changed ; 
there was now the sparkle of light and life, 
with the dimmest expression of gloom. ^ Her 
voice was changed ; there was now the music 
of contentment and peace, with the softest ac- 
■companiment of grief. 

In a word, from the day Nancy Hanks en- 
tered the home of Abraham Enloe hers was 
the happy fortune for the first time in her life 



36 

to know what was meant by having comforta- 
ble clothes, a good bed, nutritious food and 
warm friends, and ere she was aware rosy 
health and radiant hope had stolen into her 
being and taken up their abode. 

She had now learned the formal round of 
household chores, and her life becamxC halcyon. 
In her step was the light, quick spring of youth ^. 
and she turned off the domestic duties with a. 
despatch and ease that would have done credit 
to one of more practiced skill. 

Months, and it may be years, passed thus,, 
and the cherry presence and admirable service 
of Nancy Hanks engrafted themselves into the 
family life and economy of Abraham Enloe ;. 
she was by mutual and inadvertent acknowl- 
edgment one of its members. 

But the time came when the "even tenor '^ 
of Abraham Enloe's household was disturbed ;. 
it w^as a sly and impious mishap, for which the 
head of the household was held by his wife to- 
be primarily responsible. 



It was a sad hour when Nancy Hanks was 
forced by her mistake to take a final leave of 
her otherwise happy home in the Carolina 
mountains. 

There is no doubt but that indirectly Abra- 
ham Enloe gave her the "bread and bottle of 
water " the morning she was sent into the for- 
est and toward her Kentucky home. Nay, 
more, there is little doubt that he was better 
to her and his child than was Abraham of old 
to Hagar and his, for he did not set them 
adrift in the wilderness to survive or perish as 
it pleased providence, but like a man with a 
great compassionate heart, provided them 
horses and a safe consort to bring them to 
their predetermined destination. 

However remarkable the similarity in phys- 
ical circumstances, equally wonderful is the 
moral analogy of these two cases. 

If the case of Hagar and her tender boy 
presents a picture of pity and despair, that of 
Nancy Hanks and her infant child presents a 



. 38 

scene that is the very soul of sorrow and re- 
gret. The parallel does not cease with their 
banishment and journeyings, but is sustained 
in the privations and sufferings in childhood 
and youth, and the exalted honor and distinc- 
tion of the mature manhood of Ishmael and 
Abraham Lincoln. • • 

Charles Kingsley says : ''It was ordained, 
ages since, into what particular spot each 
grain of gold should be washed down from an 
Australian quartz reef, that a certain man 
might find it at a certain moment and crisis of 
his life." 

A learned divine recently said : ''St John 
wrote his gospels about sixty years after the 
events took place. Yet he had an old man's 
vivid recollection of distant occurrences." 

Tendering them these words of assurance 
from most eminent authority, we shall here 
turn over this tradition, for the time being, to 
its faithful repositors. 



39 

PHIIvIP DII.I.S. 

Mr. Dills was born in Rutherford county, 
N. C, January lo, i8oS. His father emi- 
-grated to the mountains of Western North 
Carolina almost contemporaneously with 
Abraham Enloe. Although Mr. Dills was 
four years old when Jackson whipped Paken- 
ham at New Orleans, he is nimble both in 
h)ody and mind. He describes the removal of 
the Cherokees west of the Mississippi ; tells 
of the elections when Clay and Jackson were 
rivals — of casting his first vote for the latter ; 
recalls the personal appearance of John C. 
Calhoun, whom he saw -and with whom he 
talked ; the duel between Sam Carson and 
Dr. Vance, and many other incidents of early 
days he distinctly remembers and recites with 
genuine gusto. 

Mr. Dills is a citizen of Jackson county- 
His post-office is Dillsboro. He said : 

"Although a generation younger and liv- 
ing some twenty-five miles from him, I knew 



40 

Abraham Enloe personally and intimately^ 
I lived on the road which he frequently trav- 
eled in his trips south, and he made my house 
a stopping-place. He was a large man, tall, 
with dark complexion, and coarse, black hain 
He was a splendid looking man, and a man 
of fine sense. His judgment was taken as a 
guide, and he was respected and looked up to 
in his time. 

*' I do not know when I first heard of his 
relation with Nancy Hanks, but it was many 
years before the civil war, and while I was a 
very young man. The circumstance w^as 
related in my hearing by the generation older 
than myself, and I heard it talked over time 
and again later. I have no doubt that Abra- 
ham Enloe was the father of Abraham Lin- 
coln." 

WALKER BATTLE. 

Mr. Battle was born February 12, 1809, ia 
Haywood county. His father was one of 
the three men who came to Ocona Lufta with 



41 

Abraham Enloe. He was a highly respected' 
citizen of Swain county. The following- 
statement was received from him in 1895. 
He has since died. His son, Milton Battle, a 
reputable citizen, is familiar with his father's 
statement. His post-office is Bryson City, 
N. C. Walker Battle said : 

" My father was one of the first settlers of 
this country. He came here with Abraham 
Enloe. I have lived here my entire life, and 
I knew Abraham Enloe and his family almost 
as well as I knew my own. 

" The incident occurred, of course, before 
my day, but I distinctly remember hearing 
my own family tell of the trouble between 
Abraham Enloe and Nancy Hanks when I 
was a boy. I recall, as if it were but yester- 
day, hearing them speak of Nancy's removal 
to Kentucky and that she married there a 
fellow by the name of Lincoln ; that Abraham 
Enloe had some kind of correspondence with 
the woman after he sent her to Kentucky— 



42 

-sent her something — and that he had to be 
very cautious to keep his wife from finding it 
out. 

"There is no doubt as to Nancy Hanks 
having once lived in the family of Abe 
Enloe, and there is no doubt that she was the 
mother of a child by him. 

" No, I never saw Nanc}^ Hanks's name in 
print in my life, and never saw a sketch of 
Abraham lyincoln, or heard of him, unril he 
became a candidate for the presidency in 
i860." 

WIIvLIAM H. CONLKY. 

Mr. Conley v/as born about the year 1812, 
in Haywood county. He lived the greater 
part of his life within fifteen miles of Abra- 
ham Bnloe's. He was a man of intelligence 
and perfect veracity. The following state- 
ment, the original of which is in the writer's 
possession, was obtained from him in 1895. 
He has since died. 



. 43 

Mr. Conley said : 

"My father, James Conley, was the first white- 
man to settle on the creek in this (Swain) 
county, which bears his name. Abraham En- 
loe was one of the first to settle on Ocona 
Ivufta. Bnloe and my father were warm 
friends. I knew Abe Enloe myself well. He 
was an impressive looking man. On first sight 
you were compelled to think that there was 
something extraordinary in him, and when 
you became acquainted with him your first iir^ 
pression was confirmed. He was far above the 
average man in mind. 

"As to the tradition : I remember when I 
was a lad, on one occasion some of the women 
of the settlement were at my father's house, 
and in conversation with my mother they had 
a great deal to say about some trouble that had, 
once occurred between Abe Bnloe and a girl' 
they called Nancy Hanks, who had at some- 
time staid at Enloe's. I heard nothing more,, 
as I now remember, about the matter, until ther 



44 

•year before the war, the news came that Abra- 
ham Ivincoln had been nominated for the pres- 
idency, when it was the common understand- 
ing among the older people that Lincoln was 
the son of Abe Bnloe by Nancy Hanks. 

"Not one of them had ever seen, up to that 
time, a written account of Lincoln. There is 
no doubt that Nancy Hanks lived at Abraham 
Enloe's. She became pregnant while there 
by Abraham Enloe, and to quell a family dis- 
turbance Knloe had her moved to Kentucky, 
just as my father and mother, and others, have 
time and again related in my hearing. 

"I have no doubt that Abe Bnloe was the 
father of Abraham Lincoln." 

CAPTAIN HP. EVERETT. 
Captain Everett was born April 4, 1830, in 
Davy Crockett's native county, Tennessee. 
He came to what was then Jackson, now 
Swain county, in the late fifties, and has since 
lived in twelve miles of the Abe Enloe home- 
rstead. He was captain of Company E, Third 



45 

"Tennessee. He served through the entire war, 
showing conspicuous courage at First Manassas. 
He helped to organize the county of Swain, in 
1 87 1. He was a member of the Constitutional 
Convention of 1875, that amended the Consti- 
tution of the State. He has been magistrate, 
mayor of the town of Bryson City, and sheriff 
of the county. He is well known throughout 
the State as one of her best and brainiest, 
citizens. He said : 

"In time of the war, in conversation with 
various old and reliable citizens of this section, 
I learned that Abe Lincoln's mother, Nancy 
Hanks, once lived in the family of Abe Enloe 
and was sent from there to Kentucky, to be 
delivered of a child. The cause of her removal 
to Kentucky was a threatened row between 
Abe Enloe and old Mrs. Enloe, his wife. The 
people in this county— all the old people with 
whom I talked— were familiar with the girl as 
Nancy Hanks. This subject was not only the 
<:ommon country rumor, but I saw it similarly 



40 

rehearsed in the local newspapers of the time,^ 
I have no doubt of its truth.'* 

CAPTAIN JAMES W. TBRRKIyl/. 

Captain Terrell was born in Rutherford 
county, N. C, the last day of the year 1829. 
At the age of sixteen he came to Haywood,, 
where he lived with his grandfather, Wm. D.. 
Kirkpatrick, until 1852, when he joined him- 
self in business with Col. Wm. H. Thomas, a 
man of great shrewdness and enterprise. In 
1854 he was made disbursing agent to the 
North Carolina Cherokees. In 1862 he en~ 
listed in the Confederate service as lieutenant 
in a company of Cherokee Indians. Later he 
w^as promoted. Since the war he has mer- 
chandised and been a railroad contractor. He 
has represented his county in the legislature 
and filled other offices of trust and honor. He 
is recognized throughout Western North Car- 
olina as a most excellent and useful citizen. 
He said: 



47 

"Having personally had some hints from 
the Enloes, of Jackson and, Swain, with whom 
I am intimately acquainted, my attention was 
seriously drawn to the subject by an article 
which appeared in Bledsoe's Revieiv^ in which 
the wTiter gives an account of a difficulty be- 
tween Mr. Lincoln's reputed father and a man 
named Enloe. 

"I then began to inquire into the matter 
and had no difficulty in arriving at the follow- 
ing indisputable facts, for which I am indebted 
to the following old people : The late Dr. John 
Mingus, son-in-law to Abraham Enloe; his 
W'idow IMrs. Polly Mingus, daughter of Abra- 
ham Enloe (lately deceased), and their son 
Abram Mingus, who still lives ; also to the 
late William Farley and the late Hon. William 
H. Thomas, besides many other very old 
people, all of whom, I believe, are now dead. 

" 1st. Some time about the beginning of the 
present century, a young orphan girl was em- 
ployed in the family of Abram Enloe, then 



48 

of Rutherford county, N. G. Herjjosition in 
the family was nearly that of member, she 
being an orphan with no relatives that she 
knew. Her name was undoubtedly Nancy 
Hanks. Abram Enloe moved about the year 
1805 from Rutherford, stopping first for a 
short while on Soco creek, but eventually set- 
tled on the Ocona Lufta, where his son, Wesley 
M. Enloe, now resides, then Buncombe, after- 
ward Haywood, later Jackson and now Swain 
county. 

"2d. Some time after settling on the Ocona 
Lufta Miss Hanks became enceinte^ and a 
family breeze resulted and Is'ancy Hanks was 
sent to Kentucky. 

" 3d. She was accompanied to Kentucky by 
or through the instrumentality of Hon. Felix 
Walker, then a member of Congress from the 
* Buncombe district.' 

"There is no doubt of the truth of these 
statements. They were all of them well 
known to a generation just passed away, and 



49 

•with many of whom I was well and intimately 
acquainted. The following I give as it came 

to me : 

"A probable reason for sending the girl 
Nancy Hanks to Kentucky was that at that 
time some of the Enloe kindred were living 
there. I was informed that a report reached 
here that she was married soon after reaching 

Kentucky. 

''Mrs. Abram Enloe's maiden name was 
Egerton, and she was a native of Rutherford 
-county. Some years ago, meeting with Dr. 
Egerton, of Hendersonville, and finding that 
he was a relative of Mrs. Enloe, our conversa- 
tion drifted toward the Enloe family, and he 
imparted to me the following: 

''Some time in the early fifties two young 
men of Rutherford county moved to Illinois 
and settled in or near Springfield. One of 
them, whose name was Davis, became inti- 
mately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln. In the 
fall of i860, just before the presidential elec- 



50 

tion, Mr. Davis and his friend paid a visit back- 
to Rutherford and spent a night with Dr. 
Egerton. Of course the presidential candi- 
dates would be discussed. Mr. Davis told Dr. 
Egerton that in a private and confidential talk 
which he had with Mr. Lincoln the latter told 
him that he was of Southern extraction, that 
his right name was, or ought to have been, 
Enloe, but that he had always gone by the 
name of his stepfather. 

"Mr. Enloe's Christian name was Abram, 
and if Mr. Lincoln was his son he was not un- 
likely named for him. 

"About the time of }he famous contest be- 
tween Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglass, Hon. 
Wm. H. Seward franked to me a speech of 
Mr. Lincoln's, made in that campaign, en- 
titled: 'Speech of Hon. y^^r<^;;^ Lincoln.' He 
himself invariably signed his name 'A. Lin- 
coln.' 

"To my mind, taking into consideration the 
unquestioned fact that Nancy Hanks was an 



5^ 

inmate of Abram Enloe's family, that while 
tlicre she became pregnant, that she went to 
Kentucky and there married an obscure man 
named Lincoln, the story is highly probable 
indeed, and when fortified with the wonderful 
likeness between Wesley M. Enloe, legitimate 
son of Abram Enloe, and Mr. Lincoln, I can- 
not resist the conviction that they are sons of 
the same sire. A photo of either might be 
passed on the family of the other as their gen- 
uine head." 

HON. \VM. A. DILLS. 

Mr. Dills is a native of Jackson county, 
N. C, and resides in the thriving little town 
which was named in his honor— Dillsboro. He 
is an intelligent, progressive citizen. His 
people have honored him with place and power. 
He has represented his county in the lower 
house of the legislature. He said : 

" My information with regard to the subject, 
. so far as this country is concerned, is tradi- 



52 

tional, as the events named occurred long- 
before I was born. 

"Several years ago, while I was teachings 
school in the State of Missouri, I read a sketch 
of the life of Abraham Lincoln, which ran as 
follows: 'Abraham Lincoln was born in the 
State of Kentucky, of a woman whose name 
was Nancy Savage or Nancy Hanks. His 
father is supposed to have been a man by the 
name of Enloe. When the boy was eight 
years old his mother married an old man by 
the name of Lincoln, whose profession was 
rail-splitting. Soon after the marriage he took 
a large contract of splitting rails in the State 
of Illinois, where he took the boy and his 
mother, and the boy assumed the name of 
Lincoln.' The above is a verbatim quotation 
of the sketch that far. 

''On my return from Missouri I took occa- 
sion to investigate the old tradition to my own 
satisfaction. I found that Nancy Hanks once 
lived with Abraham Enloe, in the county of 



53 

Buncombe (now Swain), and while there be- 
came involved with Enloe ; a child was immi- 
nent, if it had not been born, and Nancy 
Hanks was conveyed to Kentucky. 

"The public may read in Wesley M. Enloe, 
son of . Abraham Enloe, a walking epistle of 
Abraham Lincoln. If there is any reliance to 
be placed in tradition of the strongest class 
they are half-brothers. I have not the shadow 
of a doubt the tradition is true. 

" For further information, I refer you to Col. 
Allen T. Davidson, of Asheville.'' 
JOSEPH A. COLLINS. 

Mr. Collins is fifty-six years of age and resides 
in the town of Clyde, in Haywood county. He 
served three years of the war between the 
States as a private, after which he was pro- 
moted to the second lieutenancy of his com- 
pany, in which capacity he continued until 
the surrender. He has been in the mercantile 
business for twenty-five years, ten years of 
which he was a travelino^ salesman. He is 



54 

now proprietor of a hardware store in liis home 
town. He is well known over the entire wes- 
tern part of the State as a gentleman of the 
most unquestionable integrity. He said : 

"The first I knew of any tradition being 
connected with Abraham Lincoln's origin on 
his father's side was in 1867. At that time I 
was in Texas, and while there I made the 
acquaintance of Judge Gilmore, an old gentle- 
man who lived three miles from Fort Worth. 

"He told me he knew Nancy Hanks before 
she was married, and that she then had a child 
she called Abraham. ' While the child was yet 
small,' said Judge Gilmore, 'she married a man 
by the name of Lincoln, a whisky distiller. 
* Lincoln,' he said, 'was a very poor man, and 
they lived in a small log house.' 

" 'After Nancy Hanks was married to the man 
Lincoln,' said Gilmore, 'the boy was known by 
the name of Abraham Lincoln. He said that 
Abraham's mother, when the boy was about 
eight years old, died.* 



55 

"Judge Gilinore said he himself was five or 
six years older than Abraham Lincoln ; that 
he knew him well ; attended the same school 
with him. He said Lincoln was a bright boy 
and learned very rapidly ; w^as the best boy to 
work he had ever known. 

"He said he knew Lincoln until he was al- 
most grown, when he, Gilmore, moved to 
Texas. During his residence in Texas he was 
elected judge of the county court. He was 
■an intelligent, responsible man. 

"Years ago I was traveling for a house in 
Knoxville. On Turkey creek, in Buncombe 
county, N. C, I met an old gentleman whose 
name was Phillis Wells. He told me that he 
knew Abraham Lincoln w^as the son of i\bra- 
liam Enloe, who lived on Ocona Lufta. 

" Wells said he was then ninety years of age. 
When he was a young man he traveled over 
the country and sold tinware and bought furs, 
feathers, and ginseng for William Johnston, of 
Waynesville. He said he often stopped with 



56 

Abraham Euloe. On one occasion he called 
to stay over night, as was his custom, when 
Abraham Enloe came out and went with him 
to the barn to put up his horse, and while there 
Enloe said : 

"'My wife is mad; about to tear up the 
place ; she has not spoken to me in two weeks, 
and I wanted to tell you about it before you 
went in the house.' Then, remarked Wells: 
'I said what is the matter?' and Abraham 
Enloe replied: 'The trouble is about Nancy 
Hanks, a hired girl we have living with us.' 
Wells said he staid all night, and that Mrs. 
Enloe did not speak to her husband while he 
was there. He said he saw Nancy Hanks 
there ; that she was a good-looking girl, and 
seemed to be smart for business. 

" Wells said before he gotbacfc there on his 
next trip that Abraham Enloe had sent Nancy 
Hanks to Jonathan's creek and hired a family 
there to take care of her ; that later a child 
was born to Nancy Hanks, and she named 
him Abraham. 



57 

"Meantime the trouble in Abraham Enloe's 
family had not abated. As soon as Nancy 
Hanks was able to travel, Abraham Enloe 
hired a man to take her and her child out of 
the country, in order to restore quiet and peace 
at home. He said he sent her to some of his 
relatives near the State line between Tennes- 
see and Kentucky. He said Nancy and the 
child were cared for by Enloe's relatives until 
she married a fellow by the name of Lincoln. 

" I asked the old gentleman if he really 
believed Abraham Lincoln was the son of 
Abraham Enloe, and he replied : ' I know it, 
and if I did not know it I would not tell it.' 

" I made special inquiry about the character 
of Wells, and every one said that he was an 
honest and truthful man and a good citizen." 

H. J. BECK. 

Mr. Beck was born and reared and has all 

his life lived on Ocona Lufta. He was one of 

Abraham Enloe's neighbors, as was his father 

before him. He is now an octoo^enarian. He 



IS well-to-do, intelligent and of upright char- 
acter. He said : 

" I have heard my father and mother often 
speak of the episode of Abraham Enloe and 
Nancy Hanks. They said Abraham Enloe 
moved from Rutherford county here, bringing 
with his family a hired girl named Nancy 
Hanks. Some time after they settled here 
Nancy Hanks w^as found to be with child, 
and Enloe procured Hon. Felix Walker to 
take her away. Walker was gone two o^ 
three weeks. If they told where he took her I 
do not now think of the place. 

"As to Abraham Enloe, he was a very large 
man, w^eighing between two and three hundred. 
He was justice of the peace. The first I re- 
member of him, I was before him in trials. 
In these cases, of difference between neighbors, 
he was always for peace and compromise. If 
an amicable adjustment could not be effected 
he was firm and unyielding. He was an ex- 
cellent business man." 



59 

D. K. COLLINS. 

Mr Collins was born October 8, 1844- He 
..as a Lieutenant of Sharpshooters, Ccnpany 

F 69th N. C. Regiment He is the most ex- 
tensive dry-goods merchant in the State west 
ofAsheviUe. He is an excellent crt.zen and 
cultured gentleman. He said : 

.The tradition is well-founded. Ihavebeen 
imposition to note its bearings, and tlrere IS no 
dol that Nancy Hanks lived at Abraham 

E„loe's, and that the event took place sub- 
Sntially as related by the men and women 

who were familiar with it.'^ 

CAPT. WM. A. ENLOB. 

Captain Enloe was born in Haywood (now 

Jackson) county, and is sixty-six years of age. 

He is a successful merchant and busmess man. 

He is a gentleman of superior sense, modesty 

r^nness and integrity. He was Captarn o 
company F,a9thN.C. Regiment, commanded 

by Robt. B. Vance, and served through the 
Jar He has represented his county in the 



6o 

General Assembly. He is a grandson of 
Abraham Enloe. He said : 

*' There is a tradition come down throngh 
the family that Nancy Hanks, the mother of 
President Ivincoln, once lived at my grand- 
father's, and while there became the mother 
of a child said to be my grandfather Abraham 
Enloe's. 

One Mr. Thompson married my aunt Nancy, 
daughter of Abraham Enloe, contrary to the 
will of my grandfather ; to conceal the matter 
from my grandfather's knowledge, Thompson 
stole her away and went to Kentucky ; on the 
trip they were married. Hearing of their 
marriage, my grandfather reflected and de- 
cided to invite them back home. On their 
return they were informed of the tumult in my 
grandfather's household because of Nancy 
Hanks, w^ho had given birth to a child ; and 
when my uncle and aunt, Thompson and wife, 
returned to their Kentucky home, they took 
^ith them Nancy Hanks and her child. This 



6i 

is the family story as near as 1 can reproduce 
it from memory. 

"In 1 86 1 1 came home from Raleigh to recruit 
my company. On my return, while waiting 
for the stage in Asheville, I took dinner at what 
was then the Carolina House. The table was 
filled largely with officers going to and from 
their various commands. The topic of con- 
versation seemed to be Abraham Lincoln. 
One of the gentlemen remarked that Lincoln 
w^as noFthe correct name of the President — 
that his name was Eiloe and that his father 
lived in Western North Carolina. I main- 
tained the part of an interested listener, and 
110 one suspected that my name was Enloe. 

"After this, during the war, and while sta- 
tioned in East Tennessee, I was handed a paper 
with nearly a column of what purported to be 
.a sketch of Abraham Lincoln's early life in 
Kentucky — alleging that his father's name 
was Enloe, and that he (Lincoln) was born in 
Western North Carolina." 



62 

WESLEY M. ENLOE. 

Mr. Enloe was born 1811, in Haywood 
county, N. C, and is the ninth and only sur- 
viving son of Abraham Enloe. He resides on 
the same farm and in the same house in which 
his father lived when Nancy Hanks was ban- 
ished from the household. He is a quiet^ 
suave, intelligent gentleman of the old school, 
and a prosperous farmer. He said : 

" I was born after the incident between 
father and Nancy Hanks. I have, however, a 
vivid recollection of hearing the name Nancy 
Hanks frequently mentioned in the family 
while I was a boy. No, I never heard my 
father mention it ; he was always silent on the 
subject so far as I know. 

"Nancy Hanks lived in my father's family. 
I have no doubt the cause of my father's send- 
ing her to Kentucky is the one generally 
alleged. The occurrence as understood by my 
generation and given to them by that of my 
father, I have no doubt is essentially true. 




WESLEY M. ENLOE. 

'tr.raditional Half-brother of Abraham Lincoln at the ] 
Acre of 88. 



63 

" My father moved to this place (Ocona 
Lufta) somewhere from 1803 to 1808." 
A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE. 

It has been our steady resolve to admit noth- 
ing in these memoirs over a fictitious or anony- 
mous signature. But as all the newspaper 
articles on the subject available are thus 
signed, we determined to depart from our rule 
and give the full text of a correspondence in 
the Charlotte Observer oi September 17th, 1893. 

The Observer is one of the foremost public 
prints of the south. It is edited by Colonel 
Joseph P. Caldwell, a distinguished member 
of an old, distinguished family, and one of the 
most brilliant journalists in the country. 

And if we have been rightly informed, the 
writer, who signs himself " Student of His- 
tory," is a worthy member of another and il- 
lustrious North Carolina family. 

To THE Editor of The Observer : — ]\Iy 
attention has been called to the communication 
in last Sunday's edition on Abraham Lincoln's 



64 

ancestry. The communication and your inter- 
esting editorial called to mind a true story in 
the life of one of Lincoln's contemporaries, 
Mr. Judah P. Benjamin. It is not known to 
many of this generation that Mr. Benjamin, 
when a boy, lived in Fayetteville, N. C, and 
was a student in the academy, in that city. 
His brother Solomon and his sister Judith, 
when quite small, lived in the same tow^n. I 
think it is true, too, that a part of his boyhood 
-WSLS spent in Wilmington, N. C. His family 
were English Hebrews, and he was born in 
the West Indies. Hon. Warren Winslow, 
when in Congress, tried to remind Mr. Benja- 
min of his early life in North Carolina. I 
heard him say he failed to make Mr. Benja- 
min's ' memory recollect.' His early life in 
the United States began in North Carolina 
and official life, as a member of Mr. Davis's 
cabinet, ended in Greensboro, N. C, or Char- 
lotte, in the same State. He separated from 
Mr. Davis the morning after he left Washing- 



65 

■ton, Ga. He was Lincoln's junior by two 
years. Your correspondent connects Lincoln's 
life with North Carolina. 

A few years since, probably in 1889, the 
writer of this communication w^as informed by 
Dr. A. W. Miller that he heard in Western 
North Carolina that there was a tradition in 
Swain county that x\braham Lincoln was 
born in that county. That his father's name 
w^as Abram Enloe, and the name of his mother 
was Nancy Hanks. That the house in which 
he was born w^as at that time occupied by 
Wesley Enloe, ,a son of Abram Enloe, and, 
--ergo, the half-brother of the great president. 

In 1890, being in Webster, Jackson county, 
I met a gentleman who was county surveyor 
of Jackson, who gave me the story related by 
Dr. Miller, and added facts in the tradition. 
The story as related to the doctor was, that 
Nancy Hanks and Abram were carried to 
Kentucky by a mule-drover who was in the 
ihabit of stopping at Abram Enloe's, at the 



66 

foot of the Smoky mountains, about 1804.^ 
The surveyor's information was that Felix 
Walker, the congressional representative — the 
author of the famous expression 'speaking for 
Buncombe' — in order to do his constituent: 
" Abram " a good turn, carried Hagar and' 
Ishmael to Hardin county, Kentucky. Ile- 
stated also that two citizens, Davis by name,, 
lodged one night at his friend's house and 
stated that they lived in Illinois, and had emi- 
grated to that State from Rutherford county, . 
N. C. These gentlemen stated that Abraham 
Lincoln was acquainted with them, and on 
learning they were from Rutherford county,, 
told them his mother had frequently told him 
she had lived in that county. These gentle- 
men informed their host (Dr. Egerton of 
Hendersonville, I think) that Abram Lincoln 
was one of the big men of the great west, from 
which they had hailed. This incident hap- 
pened about 1858. 

The following week the writer was im 
Bryson City. 



67 

Dr. Miller was under the impression that 
"Wesley Enloe was a facsimile of Abraham 
Lincoln, or certain members of the Enloe 
-family were very similar in features to 
him. The Jackson surveyor had excited my 
^ curiosity, and, having a day oif, I lost no 
time, and was soon on my route up the 
"Tuckaseegee, bound for the Abram Enloe 
^homestead, just fourteen miles from Bryson 
City. The road was rocky, and my driver 
was of the silent kind, so I gave my attention 
to the shaping of my interview on what 
loomed up to me as a very difficult subject to 
handle. A silence of iiVe miles was suddenly 
interrupted by the driver's inquiry as to my 
business with Mr. Wesley Enloe. I replied 
promptly, " I am going up principally to look 
at him." This answer left me to my own 
reflections and the scenery of the Ocona Lufta, 
.a branch of the Tuckaseegee, which is beauti- 
ful beyond description. The native Indian 
.sunned himself along the roadside, or paddled 



68 

his smooth canoe under the overhanging 
Rhododendron. Suddenly the driver, over- 
burdened with curiosity, at the ninth mile- 
stone, interrupted me with the question,. 
"Would I mind telling what I wanted to look 
at Wesley Enloe for ? " " Not at all ; I have 
heard he resembles Abram Lincoln, and that 
he is his half-brother." The driver then be- 
came satisfied and talkative. He stated he 
had heard the story frequently, and was a 
relative of the Enloe family himself.. 

Passing Yellow Hill, the Indian school sup- 
ported by the government, a down-grade of 
three or four miles brought us to a beautiful, 
rich valley farm, the present home of Wesley, 
and the old Abraham Enloe homestead. The 
house was not unlike m.any of the old houses 
in North Carolina — one story, the roof sloping 
dow^n over the piazza, with the company-room 
opening on the porch. Mr. Enloe and his 
wife w^ere seated in front, a picture of undis- 
turbed contentment and rural happiness,. 




MRS. JULIA ENLOE BIRD. 

Tangliter of Wesley Enloe and therefore Niece of 
Abraham Lincol 



69 

The driver carried his team to the barn, and 
Mrii Enloe retired to look after the dinner. 

Mr. Enloe was about six feet, two or three 
inches tall, and, to my great disappointment, 
bald-headed ; his right shoulder a little lower 
than his left ; when standing, just slightly 
stooped forward. Our conversation took a 
varied turn — the force bill, the Alliance, crops, 
walnut rails, etc. I inquired finally if he had :: 
picture of himself before he lost his hair. 
His daughter Julia, about nineteen years old, 
was summoned and brought a basketful of 
photographs. My attention was taken at 
once by the striking resemblance between 
Julia and Abraham Lincoln. The picture 
with a full head of hair failed to satisfy me 
of a striking face resemblance between Wes- 
ley Enloe and Abraham Lincoln. The pho- 
tograph was taken the year Lincoln was 
killed, in Waynesville, to which place Mr. 
Enloe had carried a drove of beef-cattle the 
summer of 1865. 



70 

Mr. Enloe stated that he had never heard 
his father's name mentioned in his family in 
connection with Abraham Lincoln. He said : 
^' I was the youngest of a family of sixteen. 
Such might have been the fact, but of course 
the older ones would not be apt to talk to me 
on a subject like that ,to which you allude. 
About 1 87 1, say ten years ago, I learned and 
heard the story read from an Asheville paper 
for the first time." 

The subject was dropped until four, when 
I started for home. I remarked, after thanking 
him for his hospitality, that I was perhaps the 
only man who had ever called just to look at 
him. The old man was without his coat, with 
wool hat, narrow brim. He replied pleasantly : 
*'Now that you have seen me, what do you 
think?'* My reply was that I must confess that I 
was disappointed, but that nowseeing him with 
his hat on, with his hands crossed behind him (a 
favorite posture with Mr. lyincoln), taking in the 
whole six feet, three or four inches, there was 



71 

a resemblance which I had no doubt was 
greater twenty-five years past. The resem- 
blance in the case of Miss Julia is striking. 

The old gentleman then related the follow- 
ing incident : ^' Two months past, in Dillsboro, 
in my daughter's parlor (she married in that 
town) is a map picture of President Lincoln. 
She said to me, ' Look at that picture. Did 
you ever see a better picture of my brother 
Frank?' Frank is my son and I have always 
heard he was much like my brother Scroup, 
who was said to be very like his father Abra- 
ham Bnloe. I favor my mother's people. In 
size I am like the Enloes." 

I failed to find Frank Enloe at home. At 
Dillsboro, having a draft to cash, I was 
informed by the hotel-keeper that William 
Knloe would cash it. On going into the store) 
filled with customers, I recognized William 
Bnloe by his resemblance to Mr. Lincoln. 

On my return east, arriving at Asheville at 
3 P.M., I had dismissed the subject from my 



72 

mind, but resolved to see Colonel Davidson^, 
the father of our late attorney-general. I 
found him at home, willing to talk. And 
nowj Mr. Editor, here is Colonel Davidson's 
st'^ry as your correspondent remembers it : 

"Abram Knloe lived in Rutherford county. 
He had in his family a girl named Nancy 
Hanks, about ten or twelve years of age. He 
moved from Rutherford to Buncombe and set- 
tled on a branch of the Ocona, in what was 
afterwards Haywood, and what is now Swain 
county. At the end of eight years he moved 
to the house at the foot of the Smoky moun- 
tain, the place above described as the present 
liome of Wesley Enloe. 

"Soon after Abram moved his own daughter, 
Nancy Knloe, against his wish, ran away and 
married a Kentucky gentleman named Thomp- 
son, from Hardin county in that State. 

"In the meantime during the absence of Mrs- 
Nancy Bnloe Thompson in Kentucky, at the 
home of Abram Enloe a son was born to Nancy 



73 

Hanks, then about twenty or twenty-one years 
of age. The relations between Mrs. Enloe and 
her husband became, as a matter of course,, 
unpleasant. 

"There is a lady now living," says Colonel 
Davidson, "who, as agirl, was visiting Abram 
Enloe. This lady says that Nancy Enloe 
Thompson, having become reconciled with her 
parents, had returned from Kentucky to North 
Carolina. They were to start to Kentucky 
again in a few days, and she remembered hear- 
ing a neighbor say, 'I am glad Nancy Hanks and 
her boy are going to Kentucky with Mrs. 
Thompson. INIrs. Enloe will be happy again.' 

" I married into the Enloe family myself. I 
settled Abram Enloe's estate, and have fre- 
quently heard this tradition during my life, 
and have no doubt of its truth." 

He added the following story, which is sig- 
nificant : 

" I am a lawyer. I was seated in my office, 
since the war and soon after its close. A gen— 



74 

tleman called, introduced himself as Thompson 
and stated he learned that I was the man who 
settled Abram Bnloe's estate ; that he was a 
a son of Nancy Bnloe Thompson. He stated, 
among other things, that he was a Democrat, 
and had been an Indian agent during the L,in- 
• coin administration. 

"I asked," said Col. Davidson, "how Lin- 
coln, who was a Republican, appointed him, a 
Democrat, an Indian agent? " 

Thompson replied that Lincoln was under 
some great obligation to his ( Thompson's ) 
mother, and expressed a desire to aid her, if 
possible, in some substantial way. She finally 
consented that he might do something for her 
son, and this is the way I got my appointment. 

I have written this at your request, Mr. Edi- 
tor, hoping that you will open your columns 
to Col. Davidson and others, so that we may 
follow the clues these people may furnish, and 
thus see if there is any truth in this interest- 
ing North Carolina tradition. 

Student of History. 



75 

On first blii3li there might seem to be a dis-- 
crepancy between the statement of Wesley 
Enloe to the writer of these testimonies and. 
the above correspondent, but there is none. 

He stated to the former that he had fre- 
quently heard the name Nancy Hanks spoken 
by other and older members of the family in 
his boyhood, but never heard his father men- 
tion the name or episode. He stated to the 
latter that he had never heard Lincoln's name 
associated with the name of his father or the 
family; that he was the youngest of his 
father's sixteen children, and they had, doubt- 
less, kept the matter from him because (such 
is the inference ) of his juniority. I know that 
Wesley Enloe has taken no serious thought of 
the matter ; that he is an extremely retired and 
modest citizen, never, doubtless, having had a 
biography of Lincoln in his house, and the in- 
cidents herein related came to him by degrees, 
dawned on him gradually like so many reve- 
lations. It must be remembered that he was- 



76 

Ijorn two years, according to history, and per- 
haps four or five years according to the North 
Carolina tradition by some of the witnesses, 
after the birth of Mr. Lincoln. The fact was 
recalled by the older and knowing ones, by 
the association of the name Nancy Hanks 
with that of the great emancipator, and the 
statements of those wdio had been so fortunate 
as to obtain admissions from Mr. Lincoln him- 
:self , his mother and their Kentucky neighbors. 
Again it must be borne in mind that the En- 
loes were citizens of the same neighborhood 
-and doubtless friends of ]\Ir. Lincoln's from 
the very beginning of his public career. 

The episode was a matter of extraordinary 
local notoriety in the most secret way, for the 
reason, as explained b}' many of the old people 
Avho were familiar with it, that iVbraham En- 
loe was a very prominent citizen and greatly 
respected and admired by his neighbors and 
fellow-citizens, and the head of one of the best 
families of North Carolina, as w^ell as through 



11 

genuine sympathy for Nancy Hanks, who, ac- 
cording to the tradition, was held in unaffected 
esteem by the settlement. 

It is interesting to note that the Observer 
correspondent is one of the very few intelli- 
gent students of Wesley Enloe who, even at 
his advanced age, when his features are pinched 
and sharpened by years and toil, fails to see in 
him a striking facial as well as bodily resem- 
blance to Abraham Lincoln. 

C. A. RAGIvAND, ESQ. 

Mr. Ragland is a citizen of Missouri aiid a 
leading attorney of the town of Stockton. He 
wrote : 

"In reply to your letter to my wife have to 
say : iVbout twelve years ago I called on Col. 
T. G. C. Davis at his office in St. Louis, Mo. 
At that time I lived in Illinois. Col. Davis 
was a relative of mine, his mother having been 
a Miss Ragland of Kentucky. Col. Davis was 
^Iso born in Kentucky, and was a cousin of 
Jeff Davis, President of the Confederacy. 



78 

"Col. Davis having once resided for a long 
while in Illinois, the conversation naturally 
turned upon her times and men. He said he 
was personally and intimately acquainted with 
President I^incoln — ^was often associated with 
him, as well as against him, in law cases before 
the Supreme Court of Illinois ; that they, as 
members of a committee of the Constitutional 
Convention (I think of 1844 or 5) of Illinois,, 
drafted the most of the Constitution. He said 
that he knew the mother of I^incoln ; that he- 
was raised in the same neighborhood in Ken- 
tucky, and that it was generally understood,, 
without question, in that neighborhood, that 
Lincoln, the man that married the President's- 
mother, was not the father of the President>. 
but that his father's name was Enloe. 

"These facts I have a distinct recollection of.. 
Col. Davis died about three years ago, in Den-^ 
ton, Texas." 

COL. JOHN D. CAMERON. 

Col. Cameron was a native of North Caro- 



79 

lina. He graduated with honor from the 
University, and was a man of deep and varied 
learning and spotless reputation. He was a 
professional journalist ; was many years editor 
of the Asheville Citizen^ a bright daily. He 
was the author of the " North Carolina Hand- 
book." The congenial colonel, at a ripe age? 
has recently passed away. He wrote : 

"I am glad you have undertaken the * Lin- 
coln Mystery,' if such it can be styled, for you 
are on the spot, in the center of authority, and 
with the aid and cooperation of the relatives 
of the distinguished subject of the memoir. 
I believe all that I have heard. Col. A. T. 
Davidson is my reliable informant. I wish 
you success in your enterprise." 

As some of the foregoing witnesses have 
referred to Hon. Wm. H. Thomas and Col. 
Allen T. Davidson, we deem it proper to 
briefly tell who they are. 

Col. Thomas was born in Buncombe county, 
in a few miles of the scene of the event herein 



8o 

recorded, about the year 1806. He was be- 
reft of his father at an early age. He studied 
grammar between the plow-handles, looking 
at his book at the end of each row. He 
acquired large real estate possessions, and by 
the time he reached manhood he amassed a 
fortune. He got into the good graces of the 
Cherokee chief, Yonaguskah ; was baptized by 
the old chief as his son and made his successor. 

He lived four years in Washington and 
read the law of nations under John C. Calhoun. 
He represented his section in both branches 
of the State legislature. He was one of the 
most distinguished men of the State in his day. 

Col. Allen T. Davidson is an aged and re- 
tired lawyer residing in Asheville. In the 
prime of life he was one of the ablest criminal 
lawyers in the State. He is the father of ex- 
Attorney-General Theo. F. Davidson. He 
enjoyed a most intimate acquaintance with 
the people who are the custodians of the Lin- 
coln tradition, and understood it substantially 
as herein revealed. 




COL. \VM. H. TPIOMAvS. 



Orator, Politician and Financier— a Brilliant and Versa- 
tile Genins. Father-in-law of Hon. A. C. Avery, 
ex-Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. A Con- 
temporary of Abraham Lincoln. He was a custodian 
of and a believer in the Lincoln-Enloe Tradition. 



CHAPTER IL 



A COMPARATIVE STUDY. 

The writer has been careful to accept the 
-statements of none but persons of the highest 
character relative to the North Carolina tradi- 
tion. 

As the written or historical account of Lin- 
coln's origin is nothing more nor less than 
tradition transferred to the printed page, we 
direct the reader to the most authentic per- 
sonal biography of Mr. Lincoln in existence — 
that of Herndon and Weik — the former g-en- 
tleman having been associated with Mr. Lin- 
coln in the practice of the law for more than 
a quarter of a century. In various instances 
Mr. Herndon admits that Mr. Lincoln's origin, 
so far as he had been able to trace it, was 
enveloped in gloom. He even admits that 
:in his intimate lifetime association with Mr. 



•82 

Lincoln he never knew him to refer to his> 
ancestry in his hearing but once, and that 
Mr. Lincoln was always painfully reticent on 
the subject. 

Mr. Herndon does, however, go so far as to 
say that Mr. Lincoln divulged some fact with 
reference to his ancestry to a Chicago journal- 
ist by the name of Scripps, but at the same 
time, enjoined secrecy, and that Mr. Scripps 
died years ago without revealing it to any one. 
All that ]Mr. Lincoln ever said to Mr. Hern- 
don was a few words about his maternity. 
Averring that Mr. Lincoln's origin and ances- 
try were doubtful, if not unknown, in one 
breath, Mr. Herndon, in the next breath,, 
traces his origin and ancestry on either side to 
the third generation. This is mysterious, and 
can only be accounted for by the fact that the 
biographer was conscious that he had failed to 
find the real source of his illustrious subject, 
and his innate honesty sought ventilation in. 
these frequent admissions. 



S3 

In fact, after reading Mr. Herndon's ac- 
count of Mr. Lincoln's origin, so strong and 
recurring are the insinuations in that direction, 
that one is lead to think that Mr. Herndon 
himself knew that Thomas Lincoln was not 
the actual father of Abraham Lincoln. 
Whether Mr. Herndon knew who Lincoln's 
real father was, it does not concern us to say, 
further than that we helieve he did not, and, 
therefore, acting the part of a close personal 
friend of Mr. Lincoln and his family, and at 
the same time endeavoring to be a true biog- 
rapher, he recorded Thomas Lincoln, the re- 
puted father of Abraham Lincoln, as his 
father, coupling with the record the sugges- 
tion that the public are entitled to the benefit 
of a grave doubt as to its truthfulness. 

In Mr. Herndon's story, or, as we shall here- 
after style it, the Kentucky tradition, there is 
presumptive evidence that Mr. Lincoln knew 
who his father was. In the North Carolina 
tradition there is direct and positive evidence 



84 

that he knew who his father was. In the 
Kentucky tradition there is no positive evi- 
dence that he ever revealed who his father 
was. In the North Carolina tradition there is- 
positive evidence that he did reveal w^ho his 
father was. 

The question naturally arises with the per- 
son who is not thoroughly familiar with Mr.. 
Lincoln's character, " Why did he withhold 
from the world the truth of who his father 
was ? And if, in any case he imparted this- 
knowledge, why was he choice in his reposi- 
tory of the same ? Why did he charge one 
person with temporary secrecy, as is intimated 
in the case of Scripps, and to another person 
accompany his divulgence with no restrictions^ 
as is plainly shown in the case of Davis? 
Why did he open this secret of his ancestry to 
comparative strangers and withhold it from his 
law-partner and close friend?" 

Our answer to the first question is, that be- 
fore Abraham Lincoln entered public life he 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



Comparative likenesses of Lincoln and Enloe, according 
to this narrative half-brothers, arranged here to facili- 
tate the study of family resemblance as an argument 
for the contention of this book. 




WKSIvEY M. EXLOE, Age 8r. 



85 

was shut up in the wilderness of obscurity ; 
there was no occasion for the world to know 
who his ancestors were ; but when he came be_ 
fore the public as a leader, he very rapidly de- 
veloped into an adroit politician whose ambi- 
tion was boundless, and he sought encourage- 
ment and support beyond partizan lines ; there- 
fore, one of the probable reasons why he main- 
tained so studious a silence on the question 
of his origin might have been the politic one. 
In answer to the second question, Abraham 
Lincoln was a man of the nicest discriminat- 
ing sense, and he never lost an opportunity to 
use this rare endowment to promote, in an 
honorable way, his personal interest. He was 
the candidate of the anti-slavery party for pres- 
ident. He told Mr. Scripps, the official repre- 
sentative of a great anti-slavery journal, per- 
sonally, who his father was, but forbade fur- 
ther publication of the. matter, because his sa- 
gacity suggested, for reasons that are obvious^ 
that si!c!nce, in that quarter, would be golden. 



86 

He explained to Mr. Davis, who was not a 
newspaper correspondent nor a politician, but 
a plain citizen and voter, on the eve of the lat- 
ter's visit to his old home in North Carolina, 
that he was of southern extraction ; that his 
right name was Knloe, but that he had always 
gone by the name of his stepfather. Davis 
was going to the south ; to a democratic, pro- 
slavery State, to the home of Mr. Lincoln's 
traditional ancestors, and the shrewd presi- 
dential candidate knew that a little proud 
though quiet reminder by Davis at the distant 
south could not possibly impair his prospects 
for success. 

In answer to the last question, Mr. Lincoln 
withheld himself, as to his origin, from Mr. 
Herndon, doubtless for the same reason that he 
refused to invest one of his greatest generals 
with an important mission on a certain occasion. 

This seeming incongruousness of character 
and conduct in Mr. Lincoln was one of his 
marked individualities. This will be better 



87 

understood, and we are quite certain the read- 
er's credence will be strengthened in the prob- 
ability of Mr. Lincoln's exercising this char- 
acteristic on certain occasions, when it is 
learned what a very distinguished authority 
has said of this very phase of Mr. Lincoln's 
character. The reader may then see how easy 
it was for him to reveal who his father was to 
Scripps and Davis and not even to Herndon 
or any one else so far as is known. 

We quote from the biography of Lincoln 
by the great and learned Dr. Holland : 

'' The fact was that he rarely showed more 
than one aspect of himself to one man. He 
opened himself to men in different direc- 
tions." 

The Kentucky tradition has it that Thomas 
Lincoln was married to Nancy Hanks in 1806. 
The North Carolina tradition says that Nancy 
Hanks lived in the home of Abraham Enloe 
in the early part of the century — one witness 
says about the year 1805 ; another says from 



88 

about 1803 to 1808. The traditional testi-^ 
mony establishes the fact that it was at the 
dawn of the century. 

Mr. Herndon produces the Lincoln family 
record purporting to have been taken origi- 
nally from the Lincoln family Bible. It shows 
to have been badly mutilated. The record 
has much the appearance of having been 
written consecutively and at one sitting. It 
is in the even handwriting of Mr. Lincoln's 
mature, professional years. It is, therefore, 
unknown how and when these dates, twenty- 
one in all, covering a period of sixty-three 
years, were furnished. A plausible way of 
accounting for this record may be seen in this 
simple surmise : 

Some time in the early fifties, certainly 
after the death of Mr. Lincoln's reputed, 
father, for the latter event is recorded among 
the last in the same handwriting, out of re- 
spect for the people with whom he had come 
up, Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to his step- 



89 

mother's, in Coles county, and stepping into a 
bookstore on leaving Springfield, he purchased 
a family Bible, containing a place for a record, 
with which to present his old stepmother, for 
whom it is said he entertained a tender feel- 
ing. This indeed would have been a very 
appropriate and touching memento of the 
occasion of his first visit after his reputed 
father's death. Then it was that the family 
record, as reproduced by Mr. Herndon, was 
penned down by Mr. Lincoln from his own 
memory aided by that of his stepmother. A 
most striking evidence of the probable cor- 
rectness of this surmise may be seen in the 
completeness of the record of the members of 
the family of his stepmother and the marked 
incompleteness of the records of Thomas 
Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, and Mr. Lincoln's 
alleged full sister. The birth of neither 
Thomas Lincoln nor Nancy Hanks is re- 
corded. Why the birth of Mr. Lincoln's 
mother is left out is a mystery when, accord- 



90 

-|ng to Mr. Herndon, it must have been well 
linowii. He' gives her age, at the time of her 
marriage to Thomas Lincoln, as twenty-three. 

Again the Kentucky tradition has it that 
there was a daughter born to Thomas and 
Nancy Lincoln in 1807, before Abraham, 
whom it records as first seeing the light 12th 
February, 1809. ^^^ there is a serious dis- 
crepancy here which Mr. Lincoln's biogra- 
phers have not been able to reconcile. 

Nicolay and Hay, the latter our late ambas- 
/sador to England and present Secretary of 
.State, both of whom were very intimate 
with Mr. Lincoln, say that this sister's name 
was Nancy and contend that such was her 
real name. Mr. Herndon contends persist- 
gently that her name was Sarah and that the 
family knew her by that name. Her name 
appears of record in the family Bible as 
Nancy. Mr. Herndon surmises that the 
record was torn away down to the word Nancy 
^nd that the name was intended for that of 



91 

the President's mother. There is no evidence- 
that Mr. Lincoln ever paid any attention to 
this alleged sister. There was another Sarah 
in the family, daughter of Thomas Lincoln's 
second wife by her first husband. Mr. Lm- 
coln's alleged full sister is said not to have 
resembled him in stature, being short and 

thick-set. 

It is hard to imagine such stolid indiffer- 
ence and cold neglect on the part of such a 
man as Abraham Lincoln for an only sister— 
the nearest relative he had in the world. But 
such is the statement of his biographer. She 
was only two years his senior. At an early 
age Lincoln began to dream of his future ; as 
he grew older it seems that he would certainly 
become interested in this sister, and like Web- - 
ster who helped to educate his brother, and 
Davy Crockett who worked off his father's 
debts, have striven to bring her up to a 
position of respectability in society equal with 
the best of her class; if he had failed in.: 



92 

this ambition, and, as his biographer intimates, 
this failure had been followed by her misfor- 
tune, it had impressed the world more favor- 
-ably and deeply if his historian had said 
something like this : " Throughout her brief 
though sad career, from childhood to the grave, 
this only sister of Abraham Lincoln was fol- 
lowed by him, through evil as well as good 
report, with unremitting interest and tender 
solicitude." 

It was not in Abraham Lincoln's humane, 
manly heart to have been even careless of the 
Avelfare of an only sister. To this, as to his 
own origin as detailed by his biographer, there 
is attached a mystery. Lincoln, young though 
lie was when his melancholy mother died, 
Avas wise — he had been lead, doubtless by none 
other person save Nancy Hanks, through these 
dim paths into the light. 

A thorough examination of the Bible record, 
and the biography by Herndon alongside that 
by Nicolay and Hay, shows plainly that there 




A. LINCOLN. 
Traditionai. Son of Abram Eni^oe. 

Tor the further development of this comparative 
stud}-. 




WESLEY EXLOE 
AT THE Age of Sr. Son of Abraham EnIvOE. 

The most striking similarity iDetween Mr. Lincoln and 
Wesley Enloe is their physical formation and charac- 
teristics, which may be seen from the above compara- 
tive standing likeness. 



93 

is something mysterious and inexplicable in 
connection with this alleged sister. 

A painstaking comparison of the North Car- 
olina and Kentucky traditions will show but 
little discord relative to the probable date of 
Mr. Lincoln's birth and that of the marriao^e 
of Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln. The 
North Carolina tradition does not pretend to fix 
the date of Nancy Hanks's leaving Abraham 
Knloe's. It is no more definite than the early, 
^^ery early, years of the century. Some of the 
witnesses do go so far as to say that Abraham 
Hnloe came from Rutherford to Buncombe 
about the year 1805, and that Nancy Hanks 
came with him. 

There is no conflict here as to the birth of 
Mr. Lincoln or the marriage of his mother, 
for Abraham Enloe's coming to Western North 
Carolina might have been a few years earlier, 
as another competent witness says about 1803. 
Mr. Herndon says the Washington county, 
Kentucky, records show that the marriage took 
place in 1806. 



94 

Passing the alleged birth of the whole (?) 
sister as too mysterious to admit of liiiman 
intermeddling, except to invite the reader to 
investigate for himself, we pass to the advent 
of our illustrious subject. The family record 
has it that Abraham I^incoln was born Feb- 
ruary 12, 1809. 

It is a fact of history that, at the time of the 
marriage of Thomas Lincoln to Nancy Hanks 
the former could neither read nor write, and 
while it is intimated that the latter could do 
both, it is extremely doubtful. Every whit 
of history and tradition in regard to this par- 
ticular personage is agreed that she was, 
almost from her infancy, without any one who- 
would have cared a fig whether she learned 
the alphabet. Moreover, it would have been 
the most natural thing in the world for Nancy 
Hanks to drift along in the woods without a 
thought of beginning a family record, even if 
she could have written, until after the lapse of 
more than a decade, perhaps, and the quarrels- 



95 

between Thomas Lincoln and the Enloes, 
as our tradition testifies, coupled with the ever- 
present reminder of the name, engendered in 
the heart of Thomas Lincoln a lasting hatred. 
One might guess, and hit it, that the record 
which should have read February I2th, 1806, 
was made to read February 12th, 1809. Let 
this be as it may, there is no question as to the 
fact that this family record of Abraham Lin- 
coln's birth is pure matter of tradition. There 
is no evidence that it was ever made matter of 
record in the family of Lincoln's reputed parents 
until 1 85 1, and then the only chance to get it 
done was for Lincoln to do it himself. Verily, 
who can say that Abraham Lincoln was not 
the architect of his own fortune? 

If one should say that, after reading the 
accounts of the utter barrenness and misery of 
Thomas Lincoln's home, for such is the record, 
and the perfect worthlessness of Thomas 
himself, one could not imagine such things as 
pencil and paper, far less pen and ink and 



96 

family record, placed there by Thomas's hands, 
or at his behest, there need be no cause for 
surprise. Indeed, if the historical account of 
Thomas I^incoln, the reputed father of the 
:great president, be true, it is exceedingly un- 
certain whether he worried over so small a 
thing as the advent of a child into the world, 
particularly if it were not his child. It is 
equally doubtful whether the poor, sad-hearted 
Nancy Hanks, brooding her life away in the 
thick gloom of a dirty hovel, ever entertained 
so delightful a fancy as that of possessing 
a family record. 

Mr. Lincoln himself, according to his 
l>iographers, accepted the 12th February, 1809, 
as the time of his coming into the world. But 
in this Abraham Lincoln, no doubt, found 
himself in a place somewhat like that in 
which Zeb Vance once discovered himself. 

Vance was a candidate for the legislature 
from Buncom.be and his competitor, who was 
much his senior, objected, among other points, 




MISvS ELIZA EXLOE. 

Daughter of Wesley M. Enloe, and Traditional Niece of 
Abraham Lincoln. 



97 

to Vance's yoiithfulness. In liis reply Zeb, in 
a very apologetic air, united with the most 
affected urbanity of manner, said : " Fellow 
citizens, I would cheerfully have been born 
earlier, if it had been in my power, but my 
father and mother gave me no earthly chance 
about the matter. I humbly beg pardon? 
therefore, and will try and do better next 
time." Mr. Lincoln knew very little more 
about this event of his life than did Zeb Vance 
about the similar event of his. 

Passing a great number of expressions in 
Mr. Lincoln's biography by Messrs. Herndon 
and Weik, we come to another which w^e 
cannot forbear to notice in this running com- 
parative review of the North Carolina and 
Kentucky traditions. 

Mr. Herndon says he called upon Mr. Lin- 
coln's stepmother after the death of Thomas 
Lincoln and the assassination of the president. 
The express purpose of his visit was to obtain 
data for his prospective biography of Mr. Lin- 
coln. Of course the very first thing he did 



98 

was to endeavor to find out all he could about 
Mr. Lincoln's parents. This old lady was 
very communicative until Mr. Herndon came 
to Nancy Hanks, the president's mother, and 
her predecessor in the Lincoln household, and 
here she was mournfully mum. What was 
there associated with the inoffensive name of 
Nancy that caused this old lady to exercise 
such significant reticence? We say inoffensive 
name, because the president's mother had been 
dead forty-six years, and could not come near 
the second Mrs. Lincoln. Could it possibly 
have been a false sense of virtue or a deeply 
respectful regard for Abraham Lincoln, or 
something less exemplary in this old lady that 
caused her to withold her knowledge of Nancy 
Hanks which was undoubtedly extensive and 
valuable, from Lincoln's historian? Could it 
have been that this successor of Nancy 
Hanks, who, in her early life, had lived in 
the same neighborhood in Kentucky in which 
it occurred, and who, before that, had been Tom 
Lincoln's sweetheart, was perfectly familiar 



99 

with the event herein related by three genera- 
tions of as good people as North Carolina 
affords? What was there about Nancy 
Hanks's life that she needs must decline to talk 
about or to impart to one who is entitled to all 
the facts? Here is another unsolved and 
unsolvable mystery, should it devolve upon the 
Kentucky tradition to do the solving. We 
leave it to the reader to say whether the North 
Carolina tradition furnishes the key to it. 

The Kentucky tradition vemfies ours when 
it says that at a very early age Nancy Hanks 
was taken from her mother and sent to live 
with some of her worthless relatives. Nancy 
Hanks herself, according to the biographer, 
was a spurious child, and doubtless never 
saw her father, and, being forced from her 
mother at a very early age, virtually became 
an orphan. The North Carolina tradition sa}s 
she was an orphan girl. In the face of this 
fact one can see how probable it is that Nancy 
Hanks, at a very tender age for one of her sex, 



lOO 

rambled into the world, and just as she was 
passing into young womanhood made her 
way to North Carolina and at last into the 
home of Abraham Enloe. 

Was there any particular and plausible rea- 
son why she should have drifted toward North 
Carolina and the house of Abraham Enloe? 
At that early time there was a steady stream 
of emigrants, travelers, horse-drovers and vis- 
itors flowing back and forth between Western 
North Carolina and Kentucky. It was an 
easy thing for a person to obtain company and 
means of transportation, by watching the 
chances, from one of these sections to the other. 
The special reason why Nancy Hanks might 
have made Abraham Enloe's home, in particu- 
lar, her destination might have been the fact 
that members of the Enloe family lived at that 
time in Kentucky, and in her immediate circle 
of acquaintance. 

Realizing that she was alone in the world,. 
Nancy Hanks decided to seek a new home 




ROBERT WALKER ENLOE. 



i^on of Wesley Enloe and Traditional Nephew of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. Compare this likeness with the Frontis- 
piece in Herndon's Lincohi, 2d Vol, 



lOI 

among strangers away from the touch of her 
worthless relatives, and begin the battle of life 
anew and on her own responsibility. Making 
known her resolve to some of the Kentucky 
Enloes, or having it suggested to her by some 
of them, she was accordingly directed to the 
Kentucky Enloes' North Carolina kinsman; 
and seeking and availing herself of the first 
opportunity, Nancy put her resolution into ef- 
fect, and soon found herself in the respectable 
and happy home of Abraham Enloe, of Ruth- 
erford first and afterward Buncombe county^ 
North Carolina. That she lived in his Bun- 
combe home there is not the shadow of doubt. 

That the Enloes lived among the Hankses- 
and Lincolns in Kentucky, both traditions are 
agreed and positive. 

According to the biographical description^ 
Abraham Lincoln did no more resemble 
Thomas Lincoln, his reputed father, than did 
the rankest stranger, either physically or in- 
tellectually. The only prominent character- 



102 

istics which he inherited from Nancy Hanks 
were his slender form and melancholy temper- 
ament. This melancholy itself in I^incoln 
and his mother may be accounted for in the 
unhappy step the latter was le^d to take in the 
Carolina mountains. 

We recommend to the reader a serious paral- 
lel study of these two traditions. The subject 
of Mr. Ivincoln's paternal origin has engaged 
the time and attention of some of the most dis- 
tinguished men of our country, and, in every 
instance the result of their investigations, 
owing to their never having gotten hold of the 
true thread of his beginning, has only been to 
elicit increased wonder and speculation — won- 
der because of the seemingly impenetrable 
myster^r that settled about so tall a figure in 
our history. Even Jesus of Nazareth, the 
world's example of lowliness, had the author- 
ity of heaven for his paternal origin and an in- 
telligent carpenter for his earthly ward, but if 
v/e are to accept the story of Lincoln's pater- 



103 

nal ancestor, as told by his biographers, he 
had neither. 

But if we shall believe the disinterested ac- 
counts of as honorable and trustworthy citizens 
as North Carolina contains, handed down to 
them by as good men and women as the early 
half of the nineteenth century produced, some 
of the mist will hereafter not hover around the 
true paternal origin of Abraham Lincoln, and 
there will be opened a new and sunnier ave- 
nue in which the honest and generous student 
of American history's most remarkable man 
may confidently walk. 



CHAPTER III. 



ABB LINCOLN'S HALF-BROTHER. 

Wesley M. Enloe is now eighty-seven years 
of age. He is six feet high. When he was 
in the prime of life he was taller. His build 
is slender with the appearance of toughness 
and sinewiness. His shoulders are narrow and 
somewhat rounded at the points. He is thin 
from chest to back. He stands almost erect, 
and his head, when standing or sitting, assumes 
an attitude indicative of firmness and decision. 
His hands and fingers are large and long, and 
his arms and legs are long and skeleton-look- 
ing. His legs, in length, are out of proportion 
to his body. His neck is long ; face lean ; 
forehead high and slightly sloping ; his nose 
is large and straight and his mouth is promi- 
nent — the underlip large and protruding. His 
head will require about a number seven and 
one-eighth hat. His walk and various body pos- 



I0 5 

turings are inimitable. We shall desist from 
entering into a description of them for the 
simple reason that one who is familiar with 
Abraham Lincoln will say that we have pur- 
loined his physical idiosyncrasies. The truth 
is that the two men are so much alike that 
one hesitates to presume upon the much- 
abused credulity of mankind by a faithful por- 
trayal of the personal and bodily charac- 
teristics of Wesley Enloe, where Mr. Lincoln 
is well known, and feels constrained to cry 
out, with Philip of old : "Come and see." 

His address is plain, extremely unassuming 
and deferential, and one is soon at ease in his 
company. He has lived his whole life at the 
old homestead. He is well known over his 
own and adjoining counties. His character is 
beyond reproach, and it makes the western 
hillside of his life sunny and serene. He has 
always been an influential, well-to-do farmer^ 
whose judgment has safely been deferred to by 
his neigfhbors in matters of common sense. 



io6 

The cuts of him here presented were made 
from poor kodaks, taken whenhe was eighty-one 
and eighty-eight years of age, after, by course 
of-nature, he had lost much of his manly vigor. 
There was no other likeness of him in exist- 
ence. A cut made from a good photograph, 
or from a portrait when he was fifty, would 
have answered the purpose of its appearing 
here more satisfactorily and fairly. 

We asked Messrs. D. Apple ton & Company, 
who are now in possession of Herndon's 
Lincoln, to kindly allow us to use the frontis- 
piece of their first volume as a comparative 
likeness with that of Wesley Bnloe, but they 
courteously declined to comply with our 
request. The likeness of Mr. Lincoln here 
referred to presents him clean shaven, and 
would have served our purpose of comparison 
better than any representation of him of 
which we have any knowledge. But with 
what we have it will not require an expert to 
detect the striking resemblance. 



I07 

We also asked Messrs. Appleton & Co. 
to allow us to use a few passages from Hern- 
don & Weik's biography on condition of 
credit to the book, but they respectfully de- 
clined in this also. We have therefore been 
studiously careful not to quote a single one of 
that biography's misgivings (for such is one's 
feeling as he reads it) as to whether Mr. I^in- 
coln really had a paternal ancestor. 

We have, however, briefly compared the 
misty, winterish chapter of that book on Air. 
Lincoln's origin with our tradition, from what 
we had assimilated by reading it. We recom- 
mend to the reader who desires seriously to 
inquire into our tradition, as w^ell as to study 
judiciously the life of a truly great one among 
many of earth's so-called great men, the biog- 
raphy of Abraham I^incoln by Messrs. Hern- 
don & Weik. 

But to recur to the subject of personal resem- 
blance : We shall ask that the personal expe- 
rience of one out of scores of similar experi- 



io8 

ences may suffice to convey to you some idea 
of the remarkable physical likeness which 
Wesley M. Bnloe bears to Abraham Lincoln, 
and the force with which it strikes even a 
casual observer : 

"In 18^4 Mr. Theodore Harris, of San Anto- 
nio, Texas, a cultured gentleman, was stopping 
in my town. He had heard the Lincoln tradi- 
tion, and was thoroughly acquainted with the 
personal characteristics of Abraham Lincoln. 
Mr. Harris and myself made a trip up the 
Ocona Lufta river on a fishing and hunting 
expedition. Passing up the river, as we were 
Hearing Mr. Wesley Bnloe's place, we saw a 
man coming on foot down the road toward us. 
Before we were quite near enough to discern 
his features, Mr. Harris, in an animated but 
half-suppressed manner, pointed in the direc- 
tion of the man and said : ' That is Mr. Enloe 
of whom' I have heard — the alleged half- 
brother of Lincoln,' or words to that effect. 
Sure enough, on coming up to him, we found 



I09 

that it was Wesley Enloe, for I had met him 
before. I confessed to Mr. Harris that I had 
never before witnessed so remarkable an inci- 
dent. He explained to me, as well as I can 
now recall his words, that ' the personal resem- 
blance of Wesley Enloe to Abraham Lincoln 
flashed upon him like a revelation.'" 

SlON T. EARI.Y. 

Dillsboro, N. C, Jan. 9, 1899. 

Mr. Early is an intelligent gentleman of 
unquestioned veracity. Mr. Harris lives in 
vSan Antonio, Texas. 



A RECAPITULATION. 



I am aware that in the heading of this chap- 
ter I have made a seemingly bold venture. 
The "half-brother" is not the son of Nancy 
Hanks by her second husband, for she was not 
married twice ; he is not the son of Thomas 
Lincoln by his second wife, for his name is 
Enloe ; his native State is North Carolina and 
not Kentucky. How, then, can he be Lin- 
coln's half-brother? Only in this way: A 
native of North Carolina is the father of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, and not Thomas Lincoln, of 
Kentucky. Have I slandered the great Lin- 
coln ? Have I slandered the nation ? Let the 
facts speak : 

First. — The tradition exists ; you have read 
the evidence in the foregoing chapter. 

Second. — The silence of history. Search his 
biographies and you are convinced. Do not 



Ill 

depend on isolated paragraphs from school his- 
tories not written in Kentucky nor Illinois. 
Why this silence ? 

Third. — A striking physical resemblance of 
the "half-brother" to Mr. Lincoln. I say 
"striking," because it has overcome high Lin- 
colnian prejudice and forced conviction. 

I shall give the experience of a gentleman, 
thoroughly trustworthy and competent, sub- 
stantially as he gave it to me. It has the 
greater weight because it comes from a gentle- 
man who, from my conference with him, I 
found wished the mist cleared away from Mr. 
Lincoln's paternity. 

I cannot give his exact words and have not 
obtained permission to give his name ; and so 
presume upon the reader's confidence in my 
veracity. However, I will here engage that 
if I am challenged I will promptly call on the 
gentleman in question to speak for himself. 

He said he visited the home of Wesley Kn- 
loe, and spent the night. As was his wont he 



112 

made a study of the former's physiognomy, 
though he had no case to make out. He said 
that Mr. Enloe did not suggest Lincoln. On 
returning to his home he was examining a de- 
scription of a statue of Lincoln in one of the 
leading magazines, and paused to study the 
representation — it suggested Wesley Enloe, 
and the resemblance carried conviction. On 
inquiring more carefully into the tradition, 
his conviction was confirmed. 

You say he would not have detected the re- 
semblance if he had not first heard the tradi- 
tion. But detecting the resemblance is differ- 
ent from being convicted by it. The observer 
was loath to believe the fact the resemblance 
proved. 

The skeptic will further object that the re- 
semblance is simply a coincidence. But the 
uniqueness of the coincidence is his misfor- 
tune. It is a coincidence on one side of which 
is a tradition authenticated by the most valid 
testimony, and on the other side the most re- 



113 

tmarkable silence of history ; a silence incred- 
ible if the tradition is apocryphal, for no other 
voice has ever been heard. One note of history 
would drown the alleged slander ; but it has 
not been heard. 

Are the tradition and the silence a co- 
incidence ? 

It cannot be said that this physical resem- 
blance was the beginning of the tradition, for 
the tradition existed before it was known, ac- 
cording to the testimony. 

It cannot be said that the story causes men 
to imagine there is a resemblance; skeptics 
do not possess imaginations of such conveni- 
^ence. The country is full of close observers 
whose judgment cannot be affected by an idle 
story, whatever their prejudice may be. 

Fourth. — Clear, positive testimony. I need 
not recite the evidence bearing on the fact that 
,a young woman named Nancy Hanks was the 
:mother of an illegitimate child by Abraham 
^Enloe, and that she was conveyed to Kentucky, 



114 

either before or shortly after the birth of the 
child ; you read the evidence in Chapter I. 

If the evidence stopped here I should not 
feel myself vindicated against the charge of 
slander. 

There might have been another Nancy- 
Hanks. 

But take the testimony of Mr. Joe Collins 
of Clyde, N. C, a man of unquestioned ve- 
racity ; it runs as follows : He was in Texas y 
Judge Gilmore told him that he was raised in 
the community of Nancy Hanks, and she had 
a boy named Abraham. She married Tom 
Lincoln, a whisky distiller, and the boy took 
his name. He was about six years older than 
Abraham, but went to school with him, and 
he was the brightest boy in the community. 

Now this testimony, saying nothing of ther 
rest, must be gotten out of the w^ay before I 
am a slanderer. 

No one can reasonably doubt that Mr. Col- 
lins received these statements from a man who- 



"5 

represented himself to him as Judge Gihnore. 
Now it devolves upon my prosecutor to do one 
of the following things : 

First, to prove that no such man as Judge 
Gilmorl spent his boyhood in the community 
with young Lincoln and his mother, and that 
Mr. Collins has been deceived. Establish it 
in this wa-y. Go, or send a representative to 
the community, and let the most diligent and 
general inquiry be made, and if nobody re- 
members a boy in that section (unless all the 
old people are dead, or gone from there, who 
remember young Lincoln) named Gilmore, 
old enough to have been Lincoln's schoolmate, 
and later left for Texas, or elsewhere, then we 
give up that part of the testimony. Mr. Col- 
lins has been deceived. But if it is remem- 
bered that a boy named Gilmore grew up in 
-that community about the age of Lincoln, and 
removed, the next thing to arrive at is that he 
-did not go to Texas, as far as the people know. 
His kinsfolk can tell you, or some of the old 



ii6 

neighbors. If it is remembered that he livecB 
there at the time designated, and went to- 
Texas, the same people will know whether he- 
was a judge. If they do, the next thing to do^ 
is to establish the fact that he was not reliable. 
Few men reach the bench who are not reli- 
able. The old people in the community of 
his boyhood can give you his character there.- 
The people of the town in Texas where he 
resided can tell you whether he was a man of 
veracity. If he succeeds here Mr. Collins's- 
testimony is lost. If he fails the next thing 
to do is to produce a second Nancy Hanks who- 
was married to a second Thomas Lincoln, and 
who also had a boy named Abraham. If he 
fails in one of these things I am vindicated : 
if he succeeds in any one of them I am not con- 
victed there is other testimony. 

The positive character of the testimony in 
North Carolina and the wide-spread and in- 
eradicable conviction as to its truthfulness, and 
the suspicious silence of biography put the 



117 

burden upon my prosecutor to make general, 
painstaking and impartial investigation on the 
scene of Lincoln's boyhood, and show that 
there is nothing in the ''Nancy Hanks" story. 
Here he has the same disadvantages. This 
would seem to be my disadvantage, but it is 
his, in fact. 

Kentucky naturally aspires to the honor of 
producing the great Lincoln ; hence an in- 
superable reticence. The world will under- 
stand. But the retort may be made that in 
North Carolina the same aspiration, in some 
cases and the memory of the late unpleasant- 
ness in others, cause an undue readiness to 
ventilate the tradition. When you seek to 
obtain written statements you will find the 
retort of no great weight. It is too early for 
a Kentucky investigator to give in his expe- 
rience. There is* no readiness on the part of 
any one in North Carolina to ventilate the 
tradition. 

The contention of some of Mr. Lincoln^s' 



ii8 

biographers is that, as we have noticed else- 
where, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks 
had a daughter older than Abraham, and 
that ends it. If this be so, there are two 
Nancy Hankses. For Abraham Enloe had 
some communication with one in Kentucky, 
who had a child by him named Abraham. 
It is a little unlikely that two women named 
Nancy Hanks would each have a son named 
Abraham, but it could have happened. Did 
it happen ? The existence of the Nancy with 
a daughter older than her Abraham is abso- 
lutely without proof. 

The record in the family Bible cannot be 
relied on. One biographer thinks the oldest 
daughter's name is mutilated. Some say her 
name was one thing, some another. Lincoln 
was utterly indifferent toward this sister. 
Could she have been akin to him? Those 
who persist in apotheosizing him had better 
say no. There is positive proof that Thomas 
Lincoln's second wife had a daughter named 



119 

Sarah. The record was not made till 1 851, in 
Lincoln's own handwriting. He could not 
afford to distinguish between the two sets ot 
<:hildren. Would he be likely to leave out 
•of the record his stepmother's daughter by her 
first husband? There is doubt about the 
first " Nancy" having the daughter older than 
her Abraham. The absence of positive proof 
of the older daughter's existence and an un- 
likely coincidence jeopardize the existence of 
the first " Nancy." 

But we know that the second " Nancy " — 
the North Carolina one — did exist and went 
to Kentucky under a cloud ; had a son named 
Abraham. 

Am I convicted? Not till the investigation 
is made, as above suggested, and none are 
found who know a fact which points clearly 
in the direction of Abraham Lincoln's ille- 
gitimate ancestry. As long as there remains 
a circumstance that suggests doubt, I am not 
convicted. It will be easier for the skeptic 



I20 

to abuse than disabuse. If the testimony of 
Mr. Joe Collins is not demolished and the 
Kentucky investigator reports adversely, — and 
I await results, — we have a case clear as 
second-hand human evidence can make it. 

Do Abraham Lincoln's historians tell the 
truth w^hen they aver that, after diligent search 
where they were most likely to find, they are 
unable to satisfy themselves or even to say 
with assurance who Mr. Lincoln's father was ?' 
Does any other State or locality in this coun- 
try or elsewhere, lay claim to Lincoln's father 
beside North Carolina ? Does Kentucky her^ 
self lay serious claim to his paternal origin. 
" Of what ancestry we know not," says Mr. 
Watterson. Does North Carolina say who 
Abraham Lincoln's father was ? Are old, 
distinguished citizens, for example Col. Davis 
and Judge Gilmore, truthful ? Are three gen- 
erations of North Carolinians truthful? Is- 
the phenomenal physical likeness of Wesley 
Enloe, Lincoln's traditional half-brother^ 



121 

walking side by side with and, like a sturdy 
staff, supporting the North Carolina tradition, 
convincing and conclusive ? 

Reader, answer these questions, and say 
whether henceforth there is any doubt that 
Abraham Enloe, a strong, intelligent, leading 
North Carolina pioneer, was the great war 
president's father. 



CHAPTER IV. 



ABRAHAM ENIvOE. 

Abraham Enloe, the traditional father of 
Abraham Lincoln, was the son of Gilbert 
Enloe, and was born in York district, South 
Carolina. The first of his American forebears 
came from Scotland about the middle of the 
seventeenth century. They landed first in 
Maryland, but subsequently moved to South 
Carolina, where they settled. They were 
school-teachers. 

Abraham's father, being a man of more than 
■ordinary mental endowment, the son received 
the rudiments of a good education. On com- 
ing of age he stepped from under his father's 
roof into the world to seek his fortune. 

As a boy he was obedient and industrious 
and had made the most of his father's splendid 
tuition. He was, therefore, well equipped 



123 

for one of his day for the struggle for life. 
He was of an excellent temper and judgment 
while yet a youth. He illustrated these in his 
choice of a country and clime in which to ex- 
ercise his vigorous young faculties, as well as 
in the selection of a wife to share with him in 
their fruitions. 

He sought a home first in Rutherford county, 
N. C, where he became acquainted with a 
Miss Egerton, a yoking lady of intellect and 
culture and a member of one of the best fam- 
ilies in that section of the State. Their ac- 
quaintance at once ripened into genuine affec- 
tion, and they were married and settled down 
to farming. 

While a citizen of Rutherford county he 
established a reputation for uprightness of 
character which is still recalled with pride by 
his neighbors, and which followed him to his 
new home and throughout his life. 

About the year 1803 or 1805, while early 
settlers were " staking their claims " further 



west, Abraham Enloe emigrated from Ruther- 
ford county and stopped on the Ocona Lufta, 
at the base of the Great Smoky mountains in 
Buncombe county. 

In the settlement of his new home he en- 
countered the usual difHculties of the pioneer. 
His granddaughter, a Mrs. Floyd, a bright 
and entertaining woman, said she remembered 
hearing her grandfather recount his experi- 
ences in coming to, and while trying to estab- 
lish himself on, Ocona Lufta. The journey 
from Rutherford over great mountains and 
across dangerous streams was fraught with 
labor and peril. They were often compelled 
to improvise causeways for creeks and rivers, 
or to construct breastworks and dig wider the 
ways of the more primitive adventurer along 
the almost perpendicular mountain sides. 
When they had thus reached the summit of 
the high mountains, so steep was the descent, 
that they were obliged to tie good bits of trees 
to the rear ends of their wagons to prevent 



125 

stampeding the teams. It was not infrequent 
that, because of the absence of any way save 
a deer or Indian trail, they packed their effects 
piecemeal on their backs over formidable 
mountains. 

He was, however, fortunate in the choice of 
a stopping place. The Ocona Lufta is in the 
center of the highlands of the South, midway 
between the Hiawassa, Tennessee, and Nanta- 
hala on the one side, and the Tuckuseegih, 
French Broad and Swannanoa on the other. 

It was a land to make the heart of the strong 
man grow stronger. The soil was rich. The 
trees were original. The air was pure, the 
water was crystal, and the forests were alive 
with a very great variety of birds and animals. 
It was a land whose star was not wormwood, 
but bright hope. 

The only neighbors that were near to him 
after he had built his house were three families 
who had accompanied him from Rutherford, 
and the Cherokee Indians, in the heart of 
w^hose region he was. 



126 

There were other white families living within 
a distance of from twelve to fifty miles. A 
settlement in those days embraced a circuit of 
from twelve to fifteen miles, and was made up 
of as many families. It was such a settlement 
as this of which Abraham Enloe was the cen-^ 
tral figure and benefactor. In obedience to an 
ancient custom of mankind, each society or 
neighborhood, however small, must have its 
leading spirit and par-excellence adviser. Par- 
ticularly must this needs be the practice of 
a community where the frequent hostilities of 
aboriginals, whose grievance is by no means 
imaginary, must be met. The common inter- 
est must be healthful and steadfast. 

Abraham Enloe built his house in a fertile 
valley overlooking the Ocona Eufta, whose 
banks in summer are a continuous string of bou- 
quets — Rhododendron, ivy and honeysuckle — 
to this day. It is an incident worthy of note, 
here, that this house is still standing, but 
slightly remodeled; and has been in four coun- 



127 

ties without being removed from its original 
foundations. It is a typical pioneer abode. 
One large log house with doors in either side 
directly opposite each other, and a chimney at 
one end built of natural boulders, with a re- 
markably wide fireplace. 

A sure reminder of the brotherhood of the 
frontier community was the uniform nature of 
the settler's habitation. The style and value 
of the houses were as near the same as primi- 
tive ingenuity and limited resources could 
make them. No envy rose in the breast of 
the pioneer because of striking contrasts. The 
cabin did not droop and shiver in the shadow 
of the palace. Every man that crossed the 
settler's threshold crossed it like a knight. 

Notwithstanding Abraham Enloe was gen- 
erally absorbed in the more serious concerns of 
life, he found time for the then profitable diver 
sion of hunting. The long-barreled flintlock 
was ever " picked and primed " for emer- 
gency use. The haunts of the deer, bear, and 



128 

wild turkey were just outside his euclosure, 
aud many are the thrilling stories of delightful 
sjDort in which he was always joined by some 
of his neighbors. On his broad doorstep and 
about the clean yard sat or slumbered long- 
eared deerhounds, watchful curs or surl}^ mas- 
tiffs. Each of these bided patiently his call to 
dinner or duty, and all were indispensable in 
their respective spheres as followers of the 
chase, guards of the plantation and protectors 
of the home. 

Returning once from the home of Hon. 
Felix Walker, whose place was west of the 
settlement a distance of fift}' miles, Mrs. Enloe 
was amused to see her husband alight from 
his horse, across whose withers was a white 
bag, either end of which was strangely animate. 
Her wonder was turned to ridicule when she 
learned that the queer sack contained four fine 
deerhound puppies, the gift of the clever con- 
gressman. The pioneer would almost as 
■readily have given up his rifle as his dogs. The 



129 

keen solicitude which the settlers felt and 
manifested for these noble animals and the 
tender attachment which they in turn made 
known to their masters in their heroic rencoun- 
ters with savage beasts and more savage men, 
appeal to our highest sensibilities. Their 
estimation was shared by men, women and 
children, and this, no doubt, helped to tie the 
Gordian knot of good neighborhood. 

Abraham Enloe owned the best, and at first 
the only, horses in the neighborhood. He 
greatly valued these splendid animals, as well 
for their beauty as utility, and allowed nothing 
to go undone that would make them appear 
to the best advantage. 

He was by profession a farmer, and early set 
a progressive pace for his neighbors in his 
chosen calling. He also possessed the only 
forge and blacksmith tools in the settlement, 
with which he kept in repair the farming im- 
plements of himself and neighbors. 

There were no stores, and the nearest mar- 



I30 

kets to which the settlement had access were 
Augusta, Ga., and Charleston, S. C. To these 
places, distant hundreds of miles, over the 
roughest of country and rudest of way, the 
settler hauled his produce or drove his live 
stock, which he eagerly exchanged for the 
necessities of civilized life. 

Abraham Knloe possessed the only wagon 
in the settlement, and this served to transport, 
at one trip, the salt, powder and domestic con- 
sumed by the entire settlement a twelvemonth. 
Learning, on a certain occasion, that the set- 
tlement's meager supply of salt was exhausted, 
he harnessed his team, collected a few choice 
steers from his herd, and started for Augusta, 
Ga., where afresh supply of this indispensable 
was procured, not only for himself, but for 
each of his neighbors. 

He was a justice of the peace, an office of no 
little dignity in primitive times, and he was 
implicitly turned to as the final arbiter in ad- 
justing differences between his neighbors. He 



I 



131 

was the trusted adviser of the politicians, 
great and small of his party, with whijm he 
came in contact. The relations existing be- 
tween himself and the Hon. Felix Walker, the 
first member, of Congress from the Buncombe 
district, were the most cordial and intimate. 

It was this same Felix Walker, a discreet 
leader of frontiersmen, who, while delivering 
himself of legislative responsibility, in a 
speech of some length in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, and observing what he construed 
to be an expression of weariness on the face 
of the Speaker and members, raised himself 
to his full height and assured them that he 
was aware of the fact that he had spoken at 
some length ; that what he was saying might 
not interest them, but that it was his firm re- 
solve to continue until he had done, and then, 
with reassured emphasis, he said : " Mr. 
Speaker, I wish the gentlemen of this House to 
understand that I am speaking for Buncombe !*' 
Thus originated the phrase "speaking for 
Buncombe." 



132 

The house of Abraham Enloe was head- 
quartefs for the gospel. The pioneer preacher^ 
no matter his creed, found there a warm wel- 
come and partook of his hospitalities without 
the semblance of grudge. 

Public worship was one of the strongest 
bonds of these early communities. At a 
period too early for the log church they came,, 
for many miles, to the house of some promi- 
nent settler to an annual or semi-annual ap- 
pointment of such men as brave old Cartwright 
or the brilliant Bascom. To them worship was 
not a mere diversion. ' It was a solemn re- 
sponsibility and means of power that must be 
seriously regarded. Earnestness fitted them 
like a garment. They came to the place ap- 
pointed for worship, if it was the mild season, 
in their shirt-sleeves, with their rifles on theii: 
shoulders. They were the synonym of sim- 
plicity, and every declaration based upon a 
straight interpretation of the Bible they 
accepted eagerly and without question. 



^33 

With them there were few base coins ; most 
were rincrinof briofht gfold. From them have 
sprung, like wheat from a virgin soil, the har- 
vest of heroic men, whose mission it is to meet 
and turn aside the wild, babbling stream of 
innovation which now and then threatens to 
mingle its noxious floods with the old abiding 
river of human progress. 

Abraham Bnloe's house was often converted 
into a settlement sanctuary. It was little more 
than a half-dozen miles from his house to the 
capital of the Cherokees. His policy toward 
these children of the forest was benevolence — 
the true neighbor ; while white men of other 
settlements often provoked a "hurrying to and 
fro" upon the war-path, Abraham Bnloe and 
his dusky neighbors snugly reclined in the 
bosom of peace. 

Abraham Enloe was a man of great con- 
servatism and judgment. There was no rash- 
ness in his nature. He, therefore, sought, 
among the first things after settling in West- 



134 

ern Carolina, to establish a permanent friend- 
ship between himself and the Chief and most 
influential men of the Cherokees. He ever 
enjoyed the respect and confidence of the band, 
and his relations with the two chiefs, Yona- 
guskah and Sawinookih, were the most inti- 
mate and pleasant. 

It was indeed fortunate for Abraham Enloe 
and his neighbors that they were contempo- 
raries of such dynasties as those of Yonagus- 
kah and Sawinookih. These chiefs were both 
men of great natural ability, especially Yona- 
guskah. He was pronounced by a competent 
judge, who knew both well, the intellectual 
peer of John C. Calhoun. 

The following story, as told by Colonel 
W. H. Thomas, who was an eye-witness, will 
serve to illustrate the superstitious wisdom of 
this old Chief : The Cherokees, like most men 
of their race who come too near the blessed 
influence of Caucasian civilization, became 
addicted to strong drink. Yonaguskah, though 




SAWIXOOKIH, 



The First Chief Cherokees, in His Old Age and in 
Civilian Apparel. 



135 

himself an occasional victim of its subtle em- 
braces, determined upon the prohibition of 
strong drink among his entire band. Sud- 
denly he fell into a stupor. So deep and 
mysterious was his slumbers that the whole 
town heard of it. They came flocking to his 
side and looked long and sadly upon him 
and decided that he was dead. In agony 
they waited for the return of their venerable 
Chief to his senses and his wondrous walks 
and ways. But no sign of life appeared, and 
over a thousand of his faithful children deter- 
mined, in deep sorrow, to celebrate their an- 
cient and impressive rite of funeral and sep- 
ulture. Forming in single file they danced 
around the prostrate Chief, mumbling their 
weird death-chant. 

Suddenly, in the midst of the solemn per- 
formance, Yonaguskah arose, and standing in 
their midst with the inspiration of a prophet 
and majesty of a king, told them that he 
had been translated to the " happy hunting- 



136 

grounds," and that while there he had com- 
muned with the Great Spirit relative to their 
happiness. He said he was impressed that 
intemperance would be the means of their 
extermination, and advised them to turn their 
backs on the "fire-water" of the white man. 
He said he had served them for over forty 
years without asking for a cent of pay, and 
the only thing he exacted was their obedience. 
With profound feeling he bemoaned his own 
and his people's mistake, and concluded by 
directing Colonel Thomas to act as clerk and 
write the following : "The undersigned Cher- 
okees, belonging to the town of Qualla, agree 
to abandon the use of spirituous liquors." 

Gravely stepping forward the old Chief 
signed first and was then followed by the 
whole town. For many years this pledge was 
kept inviolate, and at last, when some yielded 
to the influence of the whites and were lead 
to break it, Yonaguskah established the " whip- 
ping-post" and enforced his simple pledge 



^2>7 

with the rigor of an English statute in the 
reign of Henry the Eighth. 

Sawinookih was a man of great native wit. 
In one of his visits, as Chief, to Washington 
he imbibed a little too prodigally of *' fire- 
water," and wandering around in the bewilder- 
ing glare of lights and city pageant (for it 
was in the night), he became "lost," and 
leaned up against the corner of a building for 
the night. In the midst of his dozings a 
passer-by accosted him with, " Hello, Indian^ 
aren't you lost?" to which he instantly re- 
plied : " No ! Injun not lost, hotel lost ! " 

Abraham Enloe was a large stock-dealer for 
his day. It was his custom to drive annually 
horses, mules and cattle to southern markets, 
and by this and the acquisition of large tracts 
of land and the slave-trade, he accumulated 
considerable means and established a reputa- 
tion at home, and in the marts of the south, 
for preeminent judgment and far-reaching busi- 
ness acumen. 



138 

He trafficked in negroes all the way from 
Western North Carolina to Florida. From 
the latter, on one occasion, he brought home 
twenty. He was kind to his slaves. A practical 
example of his benevolent policy toward them 
v;as shown in his habitual custom of reading 
and expounding to them the Holy Scriptures 
each Sabbath. 

He is described by those who were intimate 
with him to have been possessed of a fund of 
anecdote. He was also rich in practical hu- 
mor. When he would take the Sunday morn- 
ing's 'Hansy-dram, " of which the pioneer was 
famously though temperately fond, he would 
call up his little negroes, and causing them to 
stick out their big under lips, he would, with 
much dignity, pour a teaspoonful on each 
protruded lip to the infinite amusement of the 
family and the exquisite pleasure of the little 
ebonites themselves. 

In his private life Abraham Enloe was cor- 
dially esteemed by his neighbors. In his 



139 

family he ruled with patience and firmness. 
He was the father of nine sons and seven 
daughters. The sons all lived to man's estate, 
the only surviving one of whom says that 
each of the nine remained under parental con- 
trol until he was of age, and not one was ever 
known to rebel against his father. 

In personal appearance he is described by 
the family and those who knew him as having 
been a very large man, perhaps more, not 
less, than six feet high. Not corpulent but 
muscular and sinewy. His head was large 
and fine. Forehead, nose and mouth promi- 
nent. His hair was stiff and black. His 
complexion was inclined to tawny. 

Unfortunately there is no likeness of him 
in existence. Men of his time didn't set much 
by pictures, and artists were scarce in the land. 

He was undoubtedly a man of extraordi- 
nary mind. It is the universal consensus 
that he was the strongest character in his sec- 
tion, as a plain, practical, unaspiring citizen. 



140 

As heretofore intimated, his judgment was 
•clieerfully deferred to or eagerly sought by his 
fellow citizens on subjects and occasions of 
moment. 

He was simple, honest, brave ; an ardent • 
friend of truth. He hesitated not to go on 
toilsome errands of mercy for his bereft neigh- 
bors. He asked nothing in return but the an- 
swer of a good conscience. He was the best 
type of the civilian; plain, honest and unsel- 
fish. He had faults, but they were not such as 
rise from a mean heart plunged in moral tur- 
pitude, but those to which the flesh is easily 
heir. He was not a saint, but what is better 
here below, a nature's nobleman. 



CHAPTER V. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Born none knowetli when or where, he came 
np out of the bramble of obscurity. Whether 
he first saw the light in the woods, on the 
roadside, or in a dingy hovel, it matters not 
He was nature's child, and nature nursed him. 
With her blessing she dropped him on the 
world and bade him live. He was first a help- 
less infant, then a little toddling child, and 
then a boy, but unlike other boys. He was 
awkward and gawky ; his legs and arms were 
longer, his hands and feet were larger than 
those of other boys. He was more diffident 
and silent than any other boy. 

At seven he went to school and learned to 
read ; at ten he learned to write. He was seri- 
ous and thoughtful ; not overmuch energetic 
in body, but stint and duty urged him on, and 



142 

he wielded the ax at the age of eight and did 
the milling. 

Reaching youth he remained in school, pro- 
cured books and applied himself diligently. 
He stepped at once to the head of his class, 
and when a pretty schoolmate, in spelling a 
word, hesitated to know whether to say z orj, 
he pointed to his eye, she spelled it, and the 
teacher, unobservant, passed on. 

He loved books. He eagerly devoured all 
there were in the secular home library of three 
books and turned his eye in search of others. 
He made himself familiar with the best litera- 
ture of the neighborhood for miles around. 
His nightly companions were such sacred, old 
standards as the Bible, ^sop's Fables, Robin- 
son Crusoe, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and 
Weems's Life of Washington. He borrowed 
the latter from a penurious neighbor, placed it 
in the crack between the logs of the cabin 
overnight ; there came a rain, which wet the 
book, and the boy carried it to the owner to 



143 

assess the damage; the owner said seventy-five 
cents, and young Lincoln pulled fodder three 
days to satisfy him. 

At the aofe of sixteen he wrote a dissertation 
on temperance and essayed poetry. 

He grew to be a man, and he wanted, instead 
of his buckskin, a pair of brown jeans panta- 
loons, and he split for an old lady four hundred 
rails for every yard of cloth it took to make 
them. He read, he wrote, he spoke, he lec- 
tured, he farmed, he split rails, he pitched 
quoits, he joked, he wrestled, and sometimes 
he fought a fisticuff. 

He became a surveyor ; studied the statutes 
of Indiana and practiced stump-speaking in the 
fields to the hands. 

He assisted in the management of a ferry 
across the Ohio river at thirty-seven and one- 
half cents a day ; was noted as being the strong- 
est man in the settlement, and w^as equally 
famous for writing papers on the science of gov- 
ernment. He acted as bow-hand on a boat in a 



144 

voyage to New Orleans at a salary of eight 
dollars a month, and made three thousand rails 
for one man, walking three miles each day to 
his work. 

He was a religious free-thinker and an adept 
at anecdote. He became a loaf in New Salem, 
Illinois, and then clerk to an election board. 
He was a miller and then a clerk in a store. 

He was a merchant, and studied English. 
He was a hero in an interesting love-affair, 
and came near fighting a duel. 

He was captain of a company in the Black 
Hawk war and read law meanwhile. 

He was elected to the Legislature, and later 
was admitted to the bar. He was one of the 
foremost lawyers in the State of Illinois, and 
the rival of Stephen A. Douglas for the heart 
of a charming blue-blooded girl ; he vanquished 
the judge and obtained her hand in marriage. 

He was a frequent contributor to political 
journals, and attained a local prominence as a 
campaigner and manager. 



^45 

He was elected to Congress and never opened 
iliis mouth except to vote. 

He stepped upon the hustings against the 
-^'Little Giant," and attracted the attention of 
the country by his resource and facility at 
.repartee. 

He was an orator of rare felicity, and a 
.statesman of extraordinary sagacity. 

He endeavored to lecture on "The History 
;and Progress of Inventions " and ignominiously 
;failed. He was invited to Cooper Institute to 
:Speak ; he accepted the invitation, spoke on 
"The Political Issues of the Day," and paved 
his way to the presidency. 

He was nominated for the Chief Magistracy 
•of the nation over the trained diplomat and 
statesman, William H. Seward, and was elected 
•over three other candidates, one of whom was 
his brilliant old-time rival, Stephen A. Doug- 
las. He occupied the executive chair through 
the most horrible war of all history; was 
^elected to a second term during the progress of 



146 

that war, and just as he was adjusting his great"- 
faculties to lead the nation into a glorious 
peace, he was stricken by the red hand of an 
assassin. 

History affords no parallel to Abraham Lin- 
coln. In the classification of the world's heroes 
he must be grouped alone. 

In the commingling and jargon of the com- 
mon mass, he stood the tall representative of a^ 
new type. 

His ways were of his own making. With 
his face set straight forward, his long arms 
swinging heavily, he strode so mightily that- 
not only his own countrymen did list, but his 
footfall echoed around the world. Now he 
rose up, up, until he reached the heights, and 
then he grappled with the earth, and made 
those who touched him feel that they had 
touched a kindred clay. 

His was a many-sided nature — an antitheti- 
cal life — and his career was as mixed and. 
varying as his nature was unique and odd. 



147 

Abraham Lincoln will never be understood. 

:He may be appreciated, but it will require an 
exhaustive stud}^ of his character to enable 
one to do so. 

He possessed an intellect deep and keen. 
He could se'e as far into profound and difficult 
questions as any man contemporaneous with 
him, or, doubtless, who has followed him. 

He had a will — a will that was volatile or 
immovable at the command of his soul. On 
subjects of grave import his will, becoming 
fixed, was not to be swerved a hair's breadth ; 

■ on questions indifferent and small his volition 
was the obedient child of policy and expedi- 
ency. His mind was no less subtle than logi- 
cal in its operation. His judgment was as 

• clear and as unerring as mortal's usually is. 

His heart was large, good and tender as a 
child's. It was responsive in the highest and 
best degree. No one in distress ever appealed 
to him in vain. A great, picturesque rock in 

.a dry and thirsty land, the weary traveler 

-.rested in its shade. 



148 

As Lincoln emerged from tlie wilderness^- 
into civilization's highway men looked on 
him and were amazed. Whence did he come 
and whither was he bound ? Lincoln beheld 
their wonder. He read their very thought, 
and herein was his mystery. In his intuitive 
knowledge of men he towered, like the giant, 
he was, far above his fellows. 

He early, how early we know not, became 
conscious that he was a man^ and learned to^ 
associate with men as such. He did not have 
to come down on the common human level — 
he walked up and down between the clods - 
from which he sprang and to which he sadly 
sank. In matters of conscience the angel of 
the better nature was his guide. He was not 
a Christian in the popular sense, traceable no 
doubt to his early bereavement of a mother. 
He had no faith in the orthodox sense ; his- 
faith was reason — the logic of cause and effect. 
His reliance was firm in God and immortality ;, 
his religion materialized in deeds whose end. 



149 

was to make humanity better. He was not a 
dreamer, but an intense practicalist. Of this 
his life bore abundant evidence. By this it is 
not meant that he could not scheme or plan 
on the largest scale. This he did. But like 
Alexander and Napoleon, he executed as rap- 
idly as he planned. His genius was the most 
fertile and versatile. No exigency arose to 
confound his faculties and baffle his resource. 
In the fiercest administrative storm he stood 
on the topmost billow like a Norseman of old 
unterrified. In the midst of these perplexi- 
ties, when his associates were all dismay, he 
related a humorous anecdote about some good 
farmer in Illinois, and transformed the scene 
of distraction into hilarious uproar. 

He believed in the right and ability of man- 
kind to govern themselves. He did not hesi- 
tate at the same time to avow " that all of the 
people might do wrong part of the time." 

He was a man of the most ' profound prin- 
ciple. He was preeminently a man of policy. 
Principle was an end, policy was the mears. 



He was courageous physically, intellectu- 
ally, morally. He shrank not from physical 
contests the most taxing. 

He was eager to cross mental swords with 
the most brilliant. 

He antagonized old, sacred beliefs in poli- 
tics and religion with weird audacity, and his 
antagonist always bore away marks of the 
engagement. 

He always weighed well his words and cal- 
culated coolly his acts ; their effect was reck- 
oned before they left him. 

He was ambitious. He was aspiring. He 
was restless. He sighted his object, and then 
thought and planned and strove to reach it. 

He was certain of his powers, and he 
wielded them with a careful hand. There was 
no slumbering of talents with him ; no rust 
nor ashes with the broken pottery of neglect 
in the paths he frequented. 

Like some precious tree that regales the 
passer-by with its delightful perfume, he im- 



151 

parted a sweet influence to all who passed 
through the atmosphere of his being. 

While others studied books, Lincoln studied 
men. Here was another and real secret of his 
life. From his plain Western home he looked 
abroad and surveyed the field. With a wise 
and cunning eye he looked at the East with 
her Phillips and her Sumner ; the North with 
her Seward and her Cameron ; the Middle and 
West with their Corwin and Chase; men of his 
own political party ; men of vaulting ambi- 
tion and commanding talent, and wondered 
how he might pass through them into the 
White House of the nation. 

He outwitted, outth ought, outdid a rival, no 
matter how great, and then looking back from 
the hill of success, he bound up that rival's 
broken hope by an unseen stratagem. Thus 
he made Secretaries, Generals, and Justices of 
the Supreme Court. 

He was a superb tactician. He laid his 
plans with the utmost precision, and these 
rarely miscarried. 



152 

When he formulated a purpose he often con- 
suited the mind of others, but in the end he 
preferred his own judgment, and upon it he 
risked the issue. 

He was frank and open in his general inter- 
course, but there was a well-known line in his 
character where publicity stopped and privacy 
began. This discipline made his insight into 
the public men with whom he dealt approxi- 
mate omniscience. He knew their strong 
points, their virtues, and he knew their faults 
and foibles. He read their whims and their 
caprices as one would read a book. 

He unbosomed himself to none; he risked 
many and trusted few. He collided with men 
who, in some particular field, outshone him for 
a moment, but it was only for a moment ; he 
had but to stand up and his simple personality 
overshadowed them. There was but one 
other person who possessed such simplicity 
and majesty of character in our country, and 
that was Robert E. Lee. 



^53 

He knew the people — the plain folks, as he 
was pleased to style them — as no man has 
known them since the nation was born. He 
was of them. Through the white portals of 
the capitol of the republic he looked into the 
lowly doors of millions of cabins each day of 
his four years official incumbency. He saw 
the struggle and toil ; the grief and tears — he 
felt them. As their faithful servant he re- 
membered them and conducted their affairs 
with a view to their peace, prosperity, and hap- 
piness. He knew their mode of thinking. 
He was conversant with their manner of 
speaking. He was familiar with their way of 
acting. He thought, spoke and acted as if he 
were in their presence. When he saluted 
them or took them by the hand, there was a 
meeting of friends. He was the prince of 
plain men, and they were his neighbors. He 
communicated with them in simplest speech 
enlightened by homely illustration. With an 
endless supply of fable and anecdote he amused 
and instruc<-ed. 



154 

He loved and served the people, and the peo- 
ple loved and honored him. When it came to 
dealing with the people he had no patience 
with the time-server. He was bold when he 
dealt with the people. He invited the most 
rigid scrutiny of his public acts. He promul- 
gated his conviction or policy, defended it 
through every stage of its progress, and if it 
failed of its object he acknowledged his mis- 
take and assumed the responsibility. He 
sounded the public necessity and sought to 
satisfy it. 

Trickery and simulation were foreign to 
him. If he thought he was being imposed 
upon, woe be to the impostor. If it was with, 
■out his power to aid a friend, he frankly told 
him so. 

He was charitable in the high catholic 
sense. He had a tender fellow-feeling for 
mankind. He knew the many weaknesses to 
which the flesh is heir. He was sure to see the 
suffering heart, and no one ever touched it 
more often to soothe. 



155 

He frequently withdrew from the multitude 
and communed with himself. He came forth 
stronger when he had encountered a difficulty. 
He left the dross in the fire ; sorrow and trib- 
ulation were his earthly lot. " Myrrh and aloes 
and ivory palaces " turned not his head ; he 
was touched but not influenced by praise ; he 
was often mortified but never unmanned by 
criticism. The ludicrous filled him with life ; 
sorrow and suffering melted his heart 

He never fawned upon the public or an indi- 
vidual, and he was thought by some to be sel- 
fish and austere. He never meddled with the 
affairs of others, and he was accused of seeking 
personal aggrandizement. 

In the practice of the law he was natural 
and urbane, and he was called a monkey and 
a clown. He was cautious and conservative 
in the exercise of his official functions, and he 
was suspicioned and criticized by the impetu- 
ous who should have been his warmest friends. 

As president, he was not impervious to ad- 



156 

verse political criticism or personal detraction, 
and he made fewer mistakes than any man 
who has yet filled that exalted station. 

In private life he was natural, original to 
the point of eccentricity. 

He was by nature a melancholy man ; he 
drew it from his mother. The purple linea- 
ments of this inward ghost shone from his 
pale and haggard face. At times this spirit 
well-nigh overcame him, but he asserted his 
mighty will. He courted the nymph of hu- 
mor ; he gathered stories full of mirth and 
moral and told them to his company, and the 
wide prairie, the disordered law-office, or the 
executive chamber rang with jocund laughter. 

He was a patient husband, a lenient, loving 
father. He was no conventionalist ; he cared 
less than nothing for fad or fashion ; he was 
insensible to gossip and had no part or lot in 
the little strivings of small men. With him 
there were no petty likes and dislikes — noth- 
ing mean or groveling. He hated a simper- 



^57 

ing flatterer or growling churl with a mortal 
hatred. He was forgiving, sympathetic, kind 
— a broad-minded, great-hearted gentle^nan. 

He was an American — the first American 
illustrating the existence of a new national 
type. He was the first popularly acknowl- 
edged representative of the plebeian cast ; the 
first prince of American peasants, and lifting 
him upon their shoulders they proclaimed him 
the first yeoman of their freehold. 

Of Southern origin, born in the South, he 
came up on a Western prairie. To Southern 
inheritance was added Western environment. 
To Southern warmth and generosity, springing 
from Southern sun and soil, was added the 
freedom of the Western plain and the rough 
habits of Western life. He was by nature and 
education the product of rural energy. The 
South and West were the home of this ele- 
ment. Of this element Lincoln was the un- 
trammeled child. His parents never dreamed 
•of Northern or Eastern sticklings for ancient 



158 

transatlantic customs and laws. Such were 
his early surroundings, and so soon did he leave 
the South that he never had any preposses- 
sions in favor" of human slavery. 

He was the simple though strong individual^ 
and then the oracle of his class — the masses 
everywhere. The blessings of his virtuous- 
mind and provident hand in due time began 
to fall upon all. His influence no partizanship 
could destroy or faction avoid. 

He was a patriot. He loved his country for 
his country's sake. He sought to cement the 
common interest and advance the common 
weal. 

He was a steadfast believer in, and supporter 
of, the Constitution. He studied and con- 
strued it. He advocated a perpetual Union, 
and would not admit the right of any State to 
withdraw from it. He labored as no man 
ever has or will to preserve the Union unim- 
paired. This was the sole and only object of 
his chief magisterial life. He was opposed to- 



159 

the extension of human slavery into new ter- 
ritory, but "it was never his inclination or 
purpose to interfere with that institution in 
the States where it did exist." He deprecated 
the idea of freeing the colored race and turn- 
ing them loose, clothed with equal rights> 
among the white people of the South. ■ If he 
had lived it never would have been done. He 
was the great central, controlling spirit on the 
Union side, and he waged the war on purely 
defensive grounds. The noble people of the 
North and East, though blood of our blood, 
did not realize the situation. Their splendid 
humanitarianism w^as too long-ranged. Not 
by striking the shackles from the colored race, 
for that was right, but by making him the 
equal of all of us whom they would not ac- 
knowledge the equal of a single man of them, 
they decreed that we should wander in the 
wilderness of problem and uncertamty, not 
forty years, but indefinitely. Lincoln under- 
stood this, and his great heart went out in 



i6o 

sympathy for the bleeding South. He knew 
that he was the son of her bosom and that her 
children were his brethren. 

He labored as long as there was a shadow 
of hope to avert war. When its crimson tide 
began to flow, he proposed to buy the slaves 
and stop it. Failing in this, he endeavored 
to colonize them beyond the choler of unhappy 
memory and the antipathy of strange blood. 

Persistent, firm and gentle in his memory 
of the South, he bore up against the pressure 
from the North to arm the black man against 
his former master. But when at last he saw 
that unless something was done, his fondest 
dream would come to naught, he reluctantly 
gave way, ^nd a portion of the slaves were 
made to lift their hands against us. 

The stricken South lost this noble friend — 
her filial scion — when least she could aft'ord it. 
Wilkes Booth might w^ell have stayed the 
deadly hand, for if he had the South had 
journeyed round the valley through which she 



i6i 

is passing. But happily the time is now when 
the generous people of the North and East 
who, with the wisdom of prophecy, picked 
Mr. Lincoln up at his opportunity and placed 
him where God intended, are seeing their 
mistake, and with the same candor and zeal 
which marked their strife to bring about our 
problem, are essaying to help us solve it. 

America has produced and will produce but 
one Lincoln. The world may now see but 
shall not soon understand this enigmatical 
man. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE ENLOES. 

It is not only interesting but of historical 
importance to produce, in this connection, a 
short account of the Enloe family. 

This family does not lay claim to a niche in 
the nation's Westminster, nor does it accept a 
plat in its potter's field. It rather takes its 
place in the cemetery of honor and respecta- 
bility. This is not meant to refer so much to 
descent as to position in society. It is not our 
object to lay for it " claim to long descent.'^ 
This doubtless would bring with it some diffi- 
culty, and yet it would be no more difficult in 
the case of the Enloes than in that of any other 
ordinary family of the English-speaking 
people. 

In support of this last proposition, permit 
me to quote a no less eminent authority than 




MRS. ANDREW J. PATTOX. 
Daughter of Weslev Enloe. 



i63 

Justice Walter Clark : " William the Conque- 
ror ascended the throne of England A. D. 
1066. Allowing thirty-three years as a gen- 
eration, there have been twenty generations, 
counting his children then living as the first 
generation. Many people have several chil- 
dren, others have more. It is certainly not 
an immoderate calculation to average each 
descendant as having three children, for if each 
descendant with his wife had left only two 
children, the population would have stood still, 
whereas less than a million inhabitants of the 
British Isles of that day have grown to be 
nearly forty millions there and seventy mil- 
lions on this side of the water. William the 
Conqueror had four sons and six daughters ; 
averaging each of these as having three chil- 
dren, with the same average for each of their 
descendants down to the present, and the ten 
children of William in the present or twenty- 
fifth generation, by a simple arithmetical cal- 
culation, would have 2,824,295,314,810 de- 



164 

scendants now living in the British Isles, in 
America, in the colonies, or wherever men of 
British descent are to be found. 

As this is fully twenty-five thousand times 
as many as there are people of British descent 
on the globe, there must be an error in the 
above calculation. There are two. First: 
While an average of two children to each de- 
scendant is too small, since that average would 
have kept the population stationary, an aver- 
age of three is too high, as that is an increase 
of fifty per cent, every thirty years, an average 
which few countries other than the United 
States could show. 

The second error is that intermarriag-es 
among descendants must be allowed for. Say 
that owing to these errors the result of the cal- 
culation is twenty thousand times too much, it 
would still result that every man of English- 
speaking race is descended from the Conqueror. 
Reduce it as much more as you like and the 
chances are yet strong that any given man of 



"tit 



^ItK 







MRS. FLOYD. 

Granddaughter of Abraham Enloe. 



i65 

your acquaintance, as well as yourself, is prob- 
ably a descendant of the victor of Hastings."' 

Apropos to this the distinguished Judge 
says, and truly : " The doctrine of heredity 
has some force in it, but much that is called 
heredity is simply the effect of environment." 

There is much of interest here in the 
study of the character of Abraham Lincoln, 
especially as viewed from the North Caro- 
lina tradition. The history of the Enloes, 
from its remotest period, illustrates the force 
of a wise selection, both as to heredity and 
environment. This is shown most clearly 
in the ease with which they have held 
their own in the race for Anglo-Saxon su- 
premacy. From the time of their coming 
to the Colonies from across the water until 
now, their history shows that they have occu- 
pied the same stable, reputable station in soci- 
ety — the best circle of the middle class ; the 
class that constitutes the salt of civilization, 
the saving-grace element of the race. 



i66 

Three Enloe brothers, forebears of the fam- 
ily, landed about the middle of the seventeenth 
century, in Maryland. They came from Scot- 
land and England. One of these brothers 
settled on L^ord Baltimore's land, and reared a 
family. The other two went from Maryland 
to South Carolina and made their home in 
York district. 

These old Enloes were school-teachers by 
profession — men of liberal education. From 
these three men have sprung a numerous 
progeny, scattered over Maryland, South Caro- 
lina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, 
Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, California and 
Texas. It is remarkable the number of strone 
men throughout this long line. We fearlessly 
invite any one who may feel skeptical as to 
this assertion to investigate for himself. 

All down the line from the day when the 
South Carolina grandsires began to "train the 
young idea to shoot," to the present when they 
sit in State legislatures, in Congress and upon 



167 

the bench, the Knloes have undoubtedly con- 
tributed materially to the building of the Re- 
public. They have marched in the forefront 
of frontier settlement, undaunted by the stern- 
est difficulties. They have introduced civil 
government in the wilderness, and modestly, 
yet liberally, contributed to the support of its 
institutions. They have helped make, con- 
strue and enforce the laws by which they have 
been governed. Wherever duty called, in 
peace or war, they have cheerfully responded. 

Wherever they have dwelt, they have dis- 
tinguished themselves for intelligence, indus- 
try and probity. Wherever they have planted 
themselves, thrifty farmers, successful mer- 
chants, physicians, jurists and legislators have 
sprung up. 

Physically they are rather large, tall, slen- 
der, but raw-boned as a rule, and sinewy. Men- 
tally they are vigorous and alert, and through- 
out the line, in an individual here and there, 
there is a vein of natural humor. One instance 



1 68 

I recall now : Matthew Enloe, deceased, son 
of Abraham Enloe, was not an educated man, 
owing to poor early advantages, but being pos- 
sessed of a fine, native intellect he enlivened 
the company with which he was thrown with 
a sparkling humor. We have been assured 
by those who knew him well that he was even 
more like Abraham Lincoln in personal ap- 
pearance than is his surviving brother Wes- 
ley. We confess, however, that this is hard to 
conceive after seeing only the latter. 

We shall here offer the interesting letters of 
three representatives of the Enloe family, re- 
siding respectively in North Carolina, Illinois 
and Missouri. These letters are the more in- 
teresting because the North Carolina represen- 
tative, as we are led to infer from the circum- 
stances, when he wrote knew nothing of the 
Illinois or Missouri Enloes, and when the Illi- 
nois and Missouri representatives wrote neither 
of them knew anything of the North Caro- 
lina Enloes. And what is still more interest-^ 




CAPT, WIIvUAM A. KNLOE. 
Orandsou of Abraham Enloe. 



169 

ing, in this place, is the proof which these 
letters afford of the general accuracy of tra- 
dition, together with the commendable pride 
and care with which the Enloes preserve their 
name and family identity : 

DiLLSBORO, N. C, January 28, 1899. 
Jas, H, Cathey, Esq., Sylva, N. C. 

My Dear Sir :— Your letter found me in 
the grasp of the grippe, but I shall be pleased 
to answer your questionos as best I can. 

My ancestors were of Scotch and English 
descent as far as I have been able to trace 
them. They came to this country (that is, 
direct) from England. 

IMy father's given name was Scroup. This 
name was always a mystery to me on account 
of its peculiarity. I could not account for it 
until I came across it in an old English history. 
I found in this history that there once lived in 
England a family whose surname was Scroup, 
and that they owned a large estate which de- 
scended under that name. 



170 

On finding this name in English history, and 
recalling that neither I nor any one else whom I 
had ever met in this country had ever heard 
of the name Scroup outside of my immediate 
family, I became quite convinced, the orig- 
inals having set sail from there, that my fam- 
ily on some side were of English stock. 

From the best information I have, there 
were three brothers of the original Enloes 
who came from the old country. They made 
their first stop in Maryland, where one of 
them staid and raised a family. One of them 
emigrated to York District, South Carolina. 
This was my great-grandfather. I think his 
name was Gilbert. 

My grandfather, Abraham Enloe, came 
over to Rutherford county. North Carolina, 
and married there a Miss Egerton. He after- 
ward moved just above the Indian Mission, 
then to Ocona lyufta, in Buncombe county, 
where he resided till his death. He raised 
nine sons and seven daughters. The other 




CAPT. \VM, A. ENLOE 
At at Earlier Age. 



171 

brother of my great-grandfather, and one ot 
the original three, went to Middle Tennessee 
and settled. He raised a considerable family. 
One of his descendants, B. A. Enloe, repre- 
sented the Eighth Tennessee district in Con- 
gress for several successive terms. 

Some of the Yorkville branch of the family 
moved to Georgia and elsewhere. Those in 
Georgia got to spelling their name *' Inlow," 
instead of Enloe. I visited the old gentle- 
man — the head of the Georgia branch. I 
found we were of the same stock. He told 
me that when he went to Georgia, people 
there were inclined to spell the name "In- 
low"; they kept it up; he did not file his ob- 
jection, and he finally found himself illus- 
trating the doctrine that custom eventually 
becomes law, and writing it himself the same 
way. 

Judge Enloe, who was assassinated at Elli- 
3 ay, Georgia, by "bushwhackers," during the 
war, was this old gentleman's son. Hon. W. 



172 

Burder Ferguson, of Waynesville, N. C, read 
law under Judge Enloe. 

As to my grandfather Abraham Enloe's in- 
telligence, he was naturally of strong mind, 
and was well educated for a man of his time. 
He was a justice of the peace, an office of no 
little importance in pioneer days. He did 
the official writing for his neighborhood. 
Yours truly, 

William A. Enloe. 

Mulberry Grove, III., Sept. 16, 1895. 
fas. H. Cathey, Esq.^ Sylva^ N, C. 

Dear Sir:— Yours of the 14th inst. to 
hand, and I hasten to reply. 

I am unable to throw any light on the sub- 
ject of Lincoln's origin, further than looks — 
physical appearance. 

Abe Lincoln was a long, bony man, as are 
all the Enloes I have ever seen. As to his 
father being an Enloe, I know nothing. 

I will now give you, as near as I can, a 
brief history of my part of the Enloe family. 



My father's name was James ; his father's 
name was Ashael ; his father was Isaac En- 
loe, a Scotchman. Isaac Enloe was a Revo- 
hitionary patriot and soldier. There were 
two brothers of the old Scotch stock who set- 
tled in York county, South Carolina. My 
father and grandfather moved to Davidson 
county, Tenn., I think about the year 1808, 
where my grandfather Ashael taught school. 
(See history of Davidson county, Tenn.) 
About the year 181 6 they moved to Illinois, 
where we have remained ever since. 

As to myself, I served through the entire 
war, '61-5, in an Illinois regiment. I was 
not in North Carolina during the war, but 
had a brother who was with Sherman there. 
I was a First Lieutenant in the Gulf Depart- 
ment after Vicksburg, and I will say that al- 
though I fought the South for nearly four 
years, a*''d got mixed up with the Johnnies in 
many an unpleasant place (at least to me), I 
Avas never captured until years after Lee quit 



174 



at Appomattox. In 1871 I was taken in by 
a North Carolina gal. She waged a war on 
the aggressive, and came all the way to Illi- 
nois to get to capture me. Her father was in 
the Confederate army. I think this is as it 
should be — mix the people up and put an end 
to difference and distance. 

I will send you a letter I received some 
time ago from Dr. Isaac N. Bnloe, of Jefferson 
City, Missouri. Hope this may be of some 
service to you. 

Respectfully yours, 

Sam G. Bnloe. 

Jefferson City, Mo., May 5, 1894. 
Sam G. Enloe^ Mulberry Grove^ III. 

Dear Sir : — Your letter in regard to our 
family and relationship to hand. I am satis- 
fied we are of the same stock. 

From my oldest brother, James, who has 
heard my grandfather speak of his ancestors, 
I have the following : The first of the Bnloe 




J. FRANK ENI.OK. 
Son of Wesley and Grandson of Abe Enloe. 



175 

stock or family, consisting of two brothers 
named Isaac and Enoch, both school-teachers, 
settled in South Carolina. Previous to going 
to South Carolina they lived for a while, 
teaching, in Maryland. This was some time 
near the middle of the seventeenth century. 
Both originally came from Scotland. ]\Iy 
great-grandfather Enoch was the son of one 
of these Enloe brothers ; Isaac, I think. I 
have no positive information to that effect, but 
my . great-grandfather must have had brothers. 
Isaac and Enoch Enloe both married in 
South Carolina and raised large families. 
One of these families became quit: wealthy 
and remained in that State. IMembers of the 
other family, about the year 1808, moved to 
Tennessee. In 1808 my grandfather moved 
from South Carolina to Tennessee. My 
grandfather married a sister of his brother 
Isaac's wife. Isaac had three sons, Benjamin, 
James and Joel. Ben still lives iu Tennessee, 
and is the father of Benjamin A. Enloe, Con- 



176 

gressmati from the eighth Tennessee district. 
James and Joel are physicians, and reside in 
Nashville, Tenn. 

My grandfather, James Enloe, was born in 
York district. South Carolina, February 19th, 
1793. He moved from there to Tennessee in 
1808, and in 1828 he moved to Missouri. In 
Missouri he entered land and farmed, devoting 
no little time to horses and politics. He 
represented Cole county in the State Legisla- 
ture once, and Moniteau, after it was cut off 
from Cole, twice. 

My father Enoch was born in Barren 
county, Kentucky, in 1814, where my grand- 
father had moved temporarily. He came 
with grandfather to Missouri in 1828. My 
father married a Miss Murray. Of this union 
there were, in all, fourteen children. Eleven 
lived to be grown — seven sons and four daugh- 
ters. One of my brothers is a merchant, two of 
lis are physicians, and the others are farmers. 
Yours truly, Isaac N. Enloe. 



^-11 

In this letter of Dr. I. N. Enloe we have 
eliminated a great deal relating to his imme- 
diate family, of the Bnloes. We have meant 
simply to trace the name toward its original. 
There are, however, two things we have left 
out which we deem worthy of mention here — 
the frequent appearance of Abraham, showing 
that it was a common name in the Enloe 
family, and the certain indication that the 
Bnloes were superstitiously observant of the 
scriptural injunction, "to be fruitful and mul- 
tiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." 

It is only just to say that each of the fore- 
going letters is a courteous response to urgent 
and repeated solicitations. 



CHAPTER VII. 



WISDOM AND PROPHECY. 

From Mr. lyincoln's Inaugural Address of 4th March, 

1861 :— 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
and well upon this whole subject. Nothing 
valuable can be lost by taking time. If there 
be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste 
to a step which you would never take deliber- 
ately, that object will be frustrated by taking 
time ; but no good object can be frustrated by 
it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still 
have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on 
the sensitive point, the laws of your own fram- 
ing under it, while the new administration 
will have no immediate power, if it would, to 
change either. If it were admitted that you 
who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the 
dispute, there still is no single good reason for 



179 

precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, 
Christianity and a firm reliance on Him who 
has never yet forsaken his favored land, are 
still competent to adjust in the best way all 
our present difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
tous issue of civil war. The government will 
not assail you. You can have no conflict 
without being yourselves the aggressors. You 
have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy 
the government, while I shall have the most 
solemn oath to " preserve, protect and defend 
it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
but friends. We must not be enemies. Thoueh 
passion may have strained, it cannot break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic cord of mem- 
ory, stretching from every battle-field and 
patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
stone all over this broad land, will yet swell 
the chorus of the Union, when again touched. 



i8o 

as surely they will be, by the better angels of 
our nature. 



From his famous letter to Horace Greeley : — 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing,'^ 
as you say, I have not meant to leave any one 
in doubt. I would save the Union. I would 
save it in the shortest way under the Constitu- 
tion. The sooner the national authority can 
be restored the nearer the Union will be — the 
Union as it was. 

If there be those who would not save the 
Union unless they could at the same time 
destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. 

My paramount object is to save the Union, 
and not either to save or to destroy slavery. 

If I could save the Union without freeing 
any slave, I would do it — if I could save it by 
freeing all the slaves, I would do it — if I could 
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
I would do that. What I do about slavery and 
the colored race, I do because it helps to save 
the Union. 



i8i 

From his message of March 6, 1S62:— 
I recommend the adoption of a resolution 
by your honorable body, which shall be sub- 
stantially as follows : 

Resolved, That the United States, in order 
to co-operate with any State which may adopt 
o-radual abolition of slavery, give to such State 
pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its 
discretion, to compensate it for the inconve- 
nience, public and private, produced by such 
change of system. 

On the 14th August, 1862, he received a deputation of 
colored men, with whom he held an interview on the 
subject of colonization, in which he, among other thuigs, 
said: — 

It now becomes my duty, as it has long 
been my inclination, to favor the colonization 
of the people of African descent residing in 
the United States. Why should the people of 
your race be colonized, and where? Why should 
they leave this country? This, perhaps, is 
the first question for proper consideration. 
You and we are different races. We have 



l82 

between us a^btoader difference tlian exists 
between almost any other two races. Whether 
it is right or wrong I need not discuss ; but 
this physical difference is a great disadvan- 
tage to us both, as I think. 

Your race suffer very greatly, many of 
them by living among us, while ours suffer 
from your presence. In a word, we suffer 
on each side. 

If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at 
least, why we should be separated. 

You, here, are freemen, I suppose. Per- 
haps you have long been free, or all your 
lives. Your race are suffering, in my judg- 
ment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any 
people. But even when you cease to be 
slaves, you are yet far removed from being 
placed on an equality with the white race. 
You are cut off from many of the advantages 
which the white race enjoys. The aspiration 
of men is to enjoy equality with the best 
when free, but on this broad continent not a 



i83 

single man of your race is made the equal of 
a single man of ours. Go where you are 
treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. 
I do not propose to discuss this, but I treat it as 
a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot 
alter it if I would. It is the fact about which 
we all think and feel alike, I and you. 

We look to our condition. Owing to the exist- 
ence of two races on this continent, I need 
not recount to you the effects upon white men 
growing out of the institution of slavery. I 
believe in its general evil effects on the white 
race. See our present condition — the country 
engaged in a war ! our white men cutting one- 
another's throats ; none knowing how far it 
will extend, and then consider what we know 
to be the truth. But for your race among us 
there could not be war, although many men 
engaged on either side do not care for you one 
w^ay or the other. 

Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institu- 
tion of slavery, and the colored race as a basis, 



1 84 

i 

the war could not have an existence. It is 
better for us both, therefore, that we be sepa- 



rated. 



His speech on the occasion of the dedication of the 
battle-field of Gettysburg : — 

Four score and seven years ago our fath- 
ers brought forth on this continent a new na- 
tion, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the 
proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, test- 
ing whether that nation so dedicated can long 
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of 
that war. We have come to dedicate a por- 
tion of that field as a final resting-place for 
those who here gave their lives that that nation 
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
that we should do this. 

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — 
we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this 
ground. The brave men who struggled here 
have consecrated it far above our poor power 
to add or detract. The world will little note 



i85 

nor long remember what we say here, but it 
can never forget what they did here. It is for 
us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to 
the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is, 
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us, that from these hon- 
ored dead we takejncreased devotion for which 
they gave the last full measure of devotion;, 
that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain ; that this nation 
under God shall have a new birth of freedom ^ 
and that government of the people, by the 
people, for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth. 



Note: — For the foregoing extracts, except the Gettys- 
burg address, the author is under obligation to Raymond's 
Life of Lincoln. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
ADDENDA. 



PART I. author's introduction. 

Since the making of this little book inter- 
est has steadily increased in'*the subject of the 
paternal origin of Abraham Ivincoln, and the 
public faith has as steadily waxed in the theory 
upheld by this narrative. The book has 
passed through two editions ; the last is now 
exhausted and the third, containing addi- 
tional, vital evidence, is this you hold in your 
hand. 

Every statement of fact in this volume is 
the solemn statement of persons — intelligent 
admirers of Mr. I^incoln — the equal of the 
most conservative, trustworthy and patriotic 
in the country. 

The first two editions have circulated in 
every State in the Union ; have gone to Can- 
ada, Mexico, England, Scotland and India. 



i87 

The author has received letters by the 
hundred from representative citizens mani- 
festing much interest in the facts thus made 
public for the first time. Not a few of these 
letters are from gentlemen familiar with the 
time and men contemporaneous with Mr. 
Lincoln, some of whom knew Mr. Lincoln 
personall}^ Distinguished scholars, divines, 
statesmen and publicists of all sections have 
evinced previous knowledge of the existence 
of a foundation for this record, and attach un- 
mistakable credence thereto. 

Truth is, historic record and the public 
voice this narrative has elicited, unite in show- 
ing that the public have been incredulous of 
the chapter on the paternal origin of Abraham 
Lincoln as written by his popular biographers. 

No biography is complete, no biography is 
faithful that has not an open, ringing an- 
nouncement of the parentage of the subject. 

Mr. Lincoln's biographers may be divided 
into two groups touching his parentage : 
The first, those about whom the light had 
shone and whose sense of honor and profes- 
sional responsibility forbade their passing 



i88 



unnoted the fact that light revealed ; and 
the second, those who knew nor cared, more 
than to apotheosize their subject. 

Less than four of Mr. Lincoln's hundreds 
of biographers make up the first class. Neither 
class has produced an authentic biography. 
The first are the victim of a reckless credulity 
and unnatural public sentiment ; the second 
have not the full courage of their conviction. 

Messrs. John Locke Scripps, William H. 
Herndon and Ward H. Lamon are the first 
class. 

Mr. Scripps was Mr. Lincoln's first biog- 
rapher and obtained his information from 
Mr. Lincoln's own lips. 

Mr. Herndon was Mr. Lincoln's law-partner 
and intimate personal friend of more than a 
quarter of a century. Mr. Lamon, in addi- 
tion to the benefit of Mr. Lincoln's personal 
acquaintance, had unrestricted use of the 
original manuscript of Mr. Herndon. These 
three enjoyed peculiar advantages for writing 
an authentic personal biography of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Mr. Scripps wrote at a time when his esti- 



mate must, necessarily, have been shallow 
and incomplete. Mr. Herndon enjoyed a much 
wider and calmer perspective. Mr. Lamon 
came into possession of fruits of the labors of 
both, added to his own research, verification 
and contemplation. But neither of these has 
shown himself an ideal biographer of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. They have evinced fatal lack 
of industry, courage and candor. Abraham 
Lincoln was, in the last analysis, the soul of 
these virtues. If the life of any man in hu- 
man annals is entitled to fidelic record it is 
that of Abraham Lincoln. His distinguish- 
ing mark was the fidelity his character bore 
to" the mother that brought him forth— his 
life-likeness to the old Earth. 

In simple naturalness, unadulterated plain- 
ness he stands alone, not quite approached by 
any other great man of history. Even his 
physical form was so plain that it verged upon 
the grotesque. The movement of his body 
and action of his mind were ordered by the 
laws of simplicity, freedom and truth. No 
human dogma, however universal, could have 
influenced him against his conviction any 



190 

more than it could have influenced the cur- 
rents of the wind or the sea. His soul was 
the remorseless hater of sham and counterfeit 
and error, and that which maketh a lie in any 
and every guise. 

There is not another such composition in 
ancient or modern annals. There is no other 
so profound a study. Withal, to the patient 
and faithful and courageous he is possible of 
solution. Once the correct vantage-ground 
is reached there is serene and satisfying con- 
templation. Nowhere is there promise of 
larger reward for diligent investigation. The 
unknowable in him is a small and unimpor- 
tant moiety. 

Hitherto the world has been unable to ac- 
count for Abraham Lincoln's being, reason- 
ing from orthodox, human hypotheses. His 
origin and antecedents may be known. His 
advent into the world was not miraculous. 
He never claimed supernatural origin. He 
came into the world, primarily, as all other 
human beings come. If he were the child of 
a special providence, so be it. He was the 
child of natural parents. True he was the 



191 



hero of a crisis. Like the Conqueror, and 
Cromwell, and Luther, and Wesley, the 
creator of an era — the cohesive spirit of a 
world-movement. But, after all, he was no 
more divine or inspired than they. He was 
intensely human with a superlatively fine 
moral fiber — fine as that of Washington ; ru- 
dimentarily as fine as that of Robert Edward 
Lee — two of the climaxes of human perfec- 
tion in sixty centuries. 

Events of his remarkable career bear wit- 
ness to his sustained fidelity to the loftier 
human instincts — instincts inherent and 
schooled in the university of nature — nature 
in her best estates. Nature was always jeal- 
ous of Abraham Lincoln. He acknowledged 
no master and but one mistress — Nature. In 
boyhood he played the innocent pranks and 
dreamt the roseate dreams of that happy es- 
tate ; in manhood to the tragic end he played 
with nature's master hand upon the harp of 
the souls of men. An upright appreciation 
of these primal elements of Abraham Lin- 
coln's character, as well as a due regard for 
the rights of posterity should prompt his biog- 



192 



rapher to adopt as his criterion the well known 
rule of Ciceio : "Neither dare to say anything 
that is false or fear to say anything that is 
true, nor give any just suspicion of favor or 
disaffection.'^ • 

A fit biographer of Abraham Lincoln shall 
be the man of rugged honesty and patient 
intrepidity — a Boswell in detail, a Carlyle in 
faith, even if '• Boswell must be paid for 
showing his bear," and if Carlyle must moil 
for "seventeen years in the valley of the 
shadow of Frederick." 

Time may not yet be full for a just bio- 
graphical portraiture of Abraham Lincoln. 
But there is no danger in asserting that hith- 
erto his biographers have been provincial in 
concept and partizan in expression. 

The work of Mr. Wm. H. Herndon ap- 
proaches most nearly the exception. 

The first (in point of time) biographies of 
Mr. Lincoln are necessarily shallow and inac- 
curate. These were written in haste from 
motives of personal and party interest. 

The saner judgment of his biographer of 
more recent years has been eclipsed by the 



193 

nearness of the marvelous events of his offi- 
cial career, the niag-nitude of the results of 
the crisis in which Providence ordained him 
the principal factor, and his own strange, 
gigantic, fascinating personality. 

In short, four things have combined to pre- 
vent the real life of Abraham I^incoln : blind 
hero-worship ; aristocratic sentiment ; false 
modesty and aversion to laborious research — 
four things Abraham Lincoln trampled under 
his feet as an elephant would trample the mire 
of the jungle. 

Little wonder Abraham , Lincoln's origin 
has been the subject of imagination and con- 
jecture. In childhood and youth his place 
of abode a squalid camp in a hovv^ling wilder- 
ness ; his meal an ashen crust ; his bed a pile 
of leaves; his nominal guardian a shiftless and 
worthless wanderer ; his intimate associates 
and putative relatives a gross, illiterate and 
superstitious rabble. 

Little wonder that in some quarters Abra- 
ham Lincoln's fame has bordered upon deifi- 
cation. His all but miraculous burst from 
the wilderness into the nation's eye ; his he- 



194 

roic and glorious life-achievement ; his sudden 
passing at the assassin's hand, these, with the 
element of sadness which was the inseparable 
genius of his nature and culminating incident 
of his fortune, are the elements needful to 
magnify the subject beyond human propor- 
tion. Abraham I^incoln passed from the 
mountain top of earthly greatness into the 
vast unknown in a halo of heroism, mysti- 
cism and sorrow ; and doubtless he shall con- 
tinue for all time to come to draw from all 
mankind admiration, wonder and tears. In 
the glamor of this mingled mist and glare the 
huge proportion of one of the greatest and 
most human of men has been despoiled by 
the rude hand of the ignorant enthusiast. 
The great, refreshing spectacle has been bun- 
gled. The pity of it! As a result of the 
operation of these abnormal influences the 
entire life of Abraham Lincoln has suffered, 
but no chapter like that on his origin. Here 
was something out of the ordinary — some- 
thing unseen; but instead of allowing the 
light to shine into this grotto in a great life, 
fanatic biographers and other sinister and 



195 



designing persons, have endeavored to mag- 
nify and involve the mystery for purposes of 
heathen worship, or have sought to come into 
possession of it that they might destroy it. 
The paternal origin of Abraham Lincoln : 
this is the secret. Light, once deflected here 
and an hundred other nooks and corners in 
liis personality, will light up and become 
plain and comprehensible. 

To evade or conceal a cardinal fact relative 
to Abraham Lincoln is not only a moral 
wrong, but a reflection upon his character 
and a violation of his memory. The nature 
of his origin is primarily indispensable to an 
intelligent, not to say full, conception of his 
character. The correct source of his origin 
is, practically, universally accepted as a mat- 
ter of doubt — an unsettled question — an un- 
known quantity — in his life. If no trust- 
worthy means were in existence or accessible 
for the removal of the doubt, for the settle- 
ment of the question, moral responsibility 
would not obtain and the mystery wcjuld con- 
tinue. But, fortunately for posterity, there is 
in existence and available all the means neces- 



196 

sary to a* final, correct and satisfactory solu- 
tion. Using the approved methods of the 
historian in collecting data, there is not a fact 
in the first twenty years of the life of Abra- 
ham Lincoln easier of establishment than that 
of his real paternal origin. 

There could be but three ways of account- 
ing for the being of Abraham Lincoln or any 
other man : First, that he was of natural legit- 
imate origin; second, that he was of natural 
illegitimate origin ; and third, that he was of 
miraculous origin. The first hypothesis has 
been taken for granted as true and passed 
without further thought by the casual layman 
and biographical novice. The second hy- 
pothesis or theory has been affirmed by tradi- 
tion so well defined, closely connected and 
emphatic that the element of myth is entirely 
absent ; by the two most intimate and dis- 
tinguished personal biographers of Mr. Lin- 
coln after the most laborious, exhaustive and 
conscientious research ; and by an extensive, 
intelligent and authentic public consensus. 
The third hypothesis has been zvhispered by 
the few, and voiced by at least one reputable 



197 

eulogist who said that ^''Abraha)n Lmcoht 7vas 
zvithoiit ancestors^ fellows or successors?^ It is 
barely possible that some of Mr. Watterson's 
contemporaries should construe him literally, 
and that mankind generally a thousand years 
Iience would do so, it is more than probable. 
Granted that the third hypothesis is unrea- 
sonable, the settlement of the question turns 
upon the weight of evidence between the first 
and second. 

It is the office of these pages to submit tes- 
timony in support of the second theory — that 
Abraham Lincoln was of illegitimate origin, 
his father being Abraham Enloe, and not 
Thomas Lincoln or any one else. 

In addition to the sound, sustained and 
perennial tradition of North Carolina, the 
author submits in this addenda extrinsic his- 
torical data and other cumulative evidence. 



Before giving to the public the record of 
the paternity of Abraham Lincoln in the 
present enlarged form, we desire to say that 
the data bearing upon the subject is cumu- 
lative, and promises to continue to be for an 



198 

indefinite time. There is other material now 
in sight, but inaccessible for the present, or at 
all, without the expenditure of much time 
and no little money. 

This enlarged edition is the result of the 
acquisition of several years, and, when time 
and opportunity permits, facts that may come 
to light that are worth while, will be included 
in a subsequent edition. Now that this in- 
vestigation has been begun it is our duty to 
accept, preserve and publish all the material, 
trustworthy facts bearing upon the subject. 

Two things, we contend, our research have 
disclosed beyond question : First, that Abra- 
ham Lincoln was illegitimate, and second, 
that his father was an Abraham Enloe, 

Another thing is clear as a result of our 
research : That there has been a determined 
and systematic effort on the part of at least 
two of Mr. Lincoln's most intimate personal 
biographers to discover the truth of his pater- 
nal origin and publish the same to the world 
— these biographers were William H. Hern- 
don, his law partner, and Ward H. Lamon. 

Again, there is another fact that is, as a 



199 

result of this investigation, equally as certain : 
That there has been a determined and sys- 
tematic war of suppression and destruction 
against the publication and dissemination of 
the truth of Mr. Lincoln's real paternal ori- 
gin by certain individuals. 

It was the original purpose of Mr. Wm. H. 
Herndon to write a rigidly truthful narrative 
of the life of Abraham Lincoln. How much 
this purpose was influenced or prevented is a 
matter that is familiar to persons now living. 

Mr. Jessie W. Weik, of Greencastle, In- 
diana, toward the last in the preparation of 
his biography, became a collaborator with Mr. 
Herndon. In 1865 Mr. Herndon visited the 
scenes of Mr. Lincoln's birth and early years 
in Kentucky, as did Mr. Weik, later. 

These personal visits to Kentucky were 
made with a view to ascertaining the truth 
pertaining to these early periods in the life of 
their hero. Mr. Herndon says that ''Mr. 
Weik spent considerable time investigating 
the truth of a report current in Bourbon 
county, Kentucky, that Thomas Lincoln from 
one Abraham Inlow, a miller there, assumed 



200 



the paternity of the infant child of a poor girl 
named Nancy Hanks, and after marriage, 
moved with her to Washington or Hardin 
connty, where the son, who was named Abra- 
ham, after his real, and Lincoln after his 
putative father, was born." Mr. Herndon 
does not say that Mr. Weik after investiga- 
tion, found the report to be untrue, but, in- 
stead, goes on at considerable length to 
substantiate the report. 

See suppressed matter following. 

This much may be found in the suppressed 
three-volume edition of Lincoln by Messrs. 
Herndon and Weik. The question then re- 
curs upon the fact as to whether there was an 
elaborate investigation of the illegitimate 
paternity of Mr. Lincoln, and if so, did they 
write down in their manuscript for posterity, 
the complete account of their findings. The 
facts are that Mr. Weik, because of influences 
brought to bear upon him, receded from his 
original position of independent recorder of 
truth and fact and destroyed the original 
manuscript. 

Mr. Lamon bought from Mr. Herndon the 



20I 



use of his original manuscript, paying him 
three thousand dollars therefor. 

But Mr. Weik and those associated with 
him in their campaign of destruction, were 
careful to make way with every volume of 
Lamon they could lay hand on. 

Through Weik's influence other valuable 
evidence gathered by Mr. Herndon at great 
expense was destroyed. 

It will be noted that the facts touching 
Abraham Lincoln's illegitimate origin as first 
recorded by his intimate friend and law part- 
ner between whom and Mr. Lincoln, as Mr. 
Horace White assures us, there was never an 
unkind word or thought, are three editions 
removed from Mr. Herndon's original manu- 
script. The Lamon biography which we 
count as one edition, it having within its 
covers the original Herndon manuscript, the 
three-volume Life by Messrs. Herndon and 
Weik, and the two-volume edition by Messrs. 
Herndon and Weik. 

It is evident that the three-volume edition 
was suppressed because of the statements with 
regard to Mr. Lincoln's illegitimate paternity, 



202 



for the reason that these are the identical 
statements expurgated in the last or two- 
volume edition of Herndon and Weik. 

It is establishable that the collaborator of 
Mr. Herndon, who was the collector of this 
illegitimate-paternity data, was also the chief 
agent in the destruction of it. It is even 
more remarkable that the current expurga- 
ted edition in two volumes contains numerous 
hints of illegitimate paternity but in very 
subdued form. 

These facts evidently show that the origi- 
nal findings of William H. Herndon and 
Jesse W. Weik, upon the question of Abra- 
ham Lincoln's paternity, were indubitable. 
This being admitted the facts which were 
published in meager or subdued form would 
indicate the facts which were written or pub- 
lished in complete or elaborate form. 

And more, is it reasonable that two reputa- 
ble citizens, cultured and refined gentlemen, 
the one the law-partner and life-long, intimate 
friend, and the other an ardent admirer, of a 
man among the greatest and most illustrious 
of the time, would, as his personal biogra- 



203 

phers, write down for the gaze of posterity a 
rumor, a. report affecting so personal and vital 
a snbject as that of his origin, and that, too^ 
in defiance of the well-known canons of 
society? 

In view of these facts the conclusion is in- 
evitable, leaving the North Carolina tradition 
entirely out of the question, that Abraham 
Lincoln was the son of an Abraham Enloe by 
Nancy Hanks. 

We shall not discuss the question of Mr. 
Lincoln's illegitimate paternity from the La- 
mon biography point of view further than to 
invite the reader's careful attention to the 
entire quotation on the subject, and particu- 
larly to the allusions to the relations existing 
between Thomas Lincoln and Abraham En- 
loe or Inlow, the name being spelled differ- 
ently in different localities. 

Mr. Lamon's opening paragraphs are sig- 
nificant. He says almost emphatically that 
Lincoln was of illegitimate paternity. He 
wrote in the major part from Mr. Herndon's 
manuscript, and it is evident that he kjtew 
that Abraham Lincoln was an illegitimate. 



204 

Subsequent references to the "Inlows," and 
to " Abraham Inlow," afford strong reason 
for the inference that he knew to a certainty 
the fact he had obliquely though unmistaka- 
bly stated at the outset. 

It were far better had Messrs. Herndon and 
Weik and Mr. Lamon written and published 
the plain, blunt facts. By recording a rumor, 
a vague report, these biographers lowered, 
vulgarized and jeopardized their office. If, 
as it is our opinion based upon thorough in- 
vestigation, these biographers wrote down 
the true facts about Mr. Lincoln's origin, and 
these facts were afterward modified and ac- 
commodated by others to the end that they 
might be shadowed with doubt, and ulti- 
mately ignored by the student of Abraham 
Lincoln, the perpetrators misjudged mankind 
and threw a challenge in the teeth of the very 
incident they were designing to intercept. 
Somewhere in the deep of the heart of man- 
kind there is a chamber sacred to the love of 
truth. The tallest and whitest heroes of his- 
tory are the martyrs to the cause of truth. 



205 



The most universally popular of the works of 
literature is the book of truth. 

Had the Bible depicted only the fair, the 
favored and the far-famed side of its charac- 
ters—its priests and prophets, its heroes and 
poets, its rulers and its peoples— it had long 
ago been torn into ten thousand times its 
number of apparent inconsistencies, and scat- 
tered to the four winds of heaven. Then 
indeed would a Voltaire or an Ingersoll have 
had a pic-nic. But it deals with every one of 
its characters, save Christ the Lord, as a hu- 
man, and records the truth and the whole 
truth about each. This is the secret, from 
the human side, of the solidity and force of 
the book, this is one quality which led Mr. 
Gladstone to characterize it as "The impreg- 
nable rock of the Holy Scriptures." If it 
were anything short of one connected tissue 
of truth, pleasant and unpleasant, it had not 
merited the striking metaphor. 

So long as men are treated as human there 
is no reason for the distortion, misrepresenta- 
tion or suppression of the facts relating to 
their lives. In an enlightened country, such 



2o6 



as ours, to deify any man, however great, will 
prove quite a difficult if not a hazardous un- 
dertaking. Our age is an age of faith based 
upon sight, truth and practicality. Candor 
and honesty are more attractive than mist and 
falsehood. 

It is an age when the people demand to 
know all the material facts bearing upon the 
lives of their leading spirits. Much that a 
man is is accountable for in his origin. A man 
is in nowise responsible for his origin. A 
knowledge of a man's origin is indispensable 
to a full and correct insight into his character. 
The nature of a man's origin can not in any- 
wise affect his reputation. Good name is 
adduced from the acts, the deeds, the life of 
the man and not from his antecedents. False 
canons may smother and stultify important 
truths in the life of a hero, but they can not 
destroy them. The world is determined that 
its great shall not be hidden from it. It is 
eager to gaze upon them in the light of noon- 
day. The world loves to look at the thing as 
it is, and, in its final judgment, it is just. It 
has its homage for strength and perfection, 



207 

and its charity for weakness and imperfection ; 
its emnlation for virtne and contempt for vice. 

The world has unfading faith in the ability 
of the good name and fame of Abraham Lin- 
coln to take care of themselves. It don't want 
any Lincoln apocrypha, nor Lincoln apotheo- 
sization. It simply wants " Honest Abe" from 
the cradle to the grave, and it wants every im- 
portant truth and fact and incident bearing 
upon his character, antecedent and succeed- 
ent to his advent in the world, nicely, artless- 
ly, justly. But to recur to the subject under 
consideration : 

It is very remarkable that the biographies 
of Messrs. Herndon and Weik, and of Mr. La- 
mon, written a couple of decades before this 
tradition, should have taken note of the iden- 
tical facts herein recorded, namely, that Mr. 
Lincoln was illegitimate and that Abraham 
Enloe was his father. At the time of the 
writing of their biographies nor at any time 
subsequent, so far as is known, did Messrs. 
Herndon and Weik and Mr. Lamon know any- 
thing of the North Carolina tradition. Not 
one of the witnesses for the North Carolina 



2o8 



tradition, at the time the testimony was taken, 
had ever seen a copy of either edition of these 
biographies or knew aught of their contents. 
Another and remarkable thing is that the two 
leading facts of the North Carolina tradition 
went from Kentucky to Missouri as early as 
1828. The Enloes, Leslies, Simpsons, Shorts 
and Van Pools of Kentucky and Missouri, of 
1 824-1 835, were familiar with the facts. 
Everywhere the gossip was the same, that 
Abraham Lincoln was the son of Abraham 
Knloe — in New York, Missouri, Mississippi, 
Florida, North Carolina. Kentucky — and long 
before a biography of Mr. Lincoln was dreamed 
of — before the war and during the war and 
after the war. 

It is remarkable that the only ante-bellum 
biographer of Mr. Lincoln, the only biographer 
who is accredited with having got his data 
from Mr. Lincoln's own lips, and who enjoyed 
the honor of having his proofs read by Mr. 
Lincoln, obtained from Mr. Lincoln a secret 
about his ancestry which he (Lincoln) did not 
wish published then^ and which he (^the biog- 



309 

rapher Mr. John Loake Scripps) died without 
revealing to any one. 

It is remarkable that Mr. Lincoln should 
disclose the fact that "his mother was the 
illegitimate daughter of lyucy Hanks and a 
well-bred Virginia farmer or planter," enter- 
ing upon an illumined discussion of hereditary 
traits as between legitimate and illegitimate 
offspring, and then suddenly draw around him- 
self a barrier of sombre silence, Mr. Herndon 
was afraid to penetrate. Was it the disclos- 
ure he had made as to his mother's illegiti- 
macy, or the next step in the process of dis- 
closure — his ozvn illegitimacy, at which he 
lapsed? Abraham Lincoln always lapsed into 
reticence at this point in his discourse where, 
to his mind, to have continued would have 
impaired his personal, or the public, final in- 
terest. At the time at which he was talking 
with Mr. Herndon, nor at the time he divulged 
the secret to Mr. Scripps was it expedient, to 
his mind, to make this latter matter of public 
disclosure. It was something he did not wish 
^' published then " and relating to his ancestry. 

It is remarkable that there could never be 



2IO 

found official record of the marriage of Thomas 
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks ; that ther-e should 
have been no affection between Thomas Lincoln 
and Abraham Lincoln his reputed son ; that 
the former should have treated the latter with 
great and habitual cruelty ; that there should; 
have been a sister older than Abraham but no 
vestige of proof that he even recognized her 
while she lived, or referred to her after her 
death — an only sister. It is remarkable that 
this sister's name is subject for difference be- 
tween biographers — some, able and well in- 
formed, contending that her name was Nancy, 
and others equally able and well informed, 
affirming that her name was Sarah. It is re- 
markable that there should have been any 
variance of information among Lincoln biog- 
raphers as to the given came of the father ci 
Thomas Lincoln. It is still more remarkable 
that the variance is between one biographer,, 
a down-easter, Dr. Holland, on the one side, 
and Thomas Lincoln's own family and life- 
time associates, on the other. Dr. Holland 
contending, without verification that Thomas 
Lincoln's father's name was Abraham ; and. 



211 



Oil the other hand, the Haiikses — John and 
iDennis (Dennis here being disinterested) , and 
'Col. Chapman, who married Thomas Lincoln's 
stepdaughter, submitting that his name was 
Mordecai, and that this Mordecai, Thomas 
Lincoln's father, had four brothers — John, 
Jacob, Isaac and Thomas. 

It is remarkable that, according to the tes- 
timony of the family there was not a single 
member named Abraham prior to the advent 
of the President, and that Dr. Holland should 
have discovered the given name of the grand- 
sire to be the same as that of the President. 
It is remarkable that Abraham has been a 
common name among the Enloes for a hun- 
dred years. Indeed it is remarkable opposite 
this tradition that the child was christened 
Abraham. 

It is remarkable that the Bible record of 
births and deaths which purports to be in the 
handwriting of the President devotes so much 
space to the Johnsons, who were of no blood 
relation, and so little to his mother, reputed 
: sister, reputed father and the Hankses and 
Lincolns, who should have been bound to 



212 



him by the most sacred ties of blood andJ 
memory. 

Finally, it is remarkable, if the tradition 
that Abraham Enloe was the father of Abra- 
ham Lincoln be a fabrication and a fraud, 
that certain influences of standing and power 
should have sought with so much diligence 
and persistency to run it to earth and break 
or destroy it. Over against the subject of 
these pages all these facts are very pre-en- 
gaging and remarkable. 



In connection with this tradition we deem; 
the history of the Enloe family of much im- 
portance. It has, however, for obvious rea- 
sons, been our first and foremost object to 
strengthen and perfect the lines of the main 
fact of this book. But, fortunately, in so 
doing we have come into possession of quite 
an interesting and extended account of cer- 
tain branches of the Enloe family resident in 
States other than North Carolina. For the 
majority of this data we are directly indebted 
to Dr. I. N. Enloe of Jefferson City, Mis- 
souri. 



213 

It is evident from this and other record 
that the family is of Scotch origin, — that the 
originals came from Scotland is borne out by 
all the testimony. 

It is also evident there are two brothers — 
first settlers — accounted for by informed mem- 
bers of the family residing in different States 
and unacquainted with each other. These 
two brothers stopped in York District, South 
Carolina. They were school teachers by pro- 
fession. Their names were Isaac and Enoch. 

It is further evident that all the Enloes 
known to this narrative sprang from these 
two forbears, and that Gilbert Enloe was the 
son of Isaac. Gilbert Enloe, therefore, could 
not have been the father of Abraham Enloe, 
the father of Abraham Lincoln. 

James Enloe, of Missouri, a descendant of 
Enoch, states it as his opinion that Wesley 
and the other Enloes, of North Carolina, were 
mistaken as to Gilbert's having been the father 
of Abraham ; and Rev. Asahel Enloe, the son 
of Gilbert, says that his father was the son of 
Isaac; that he knew Abraham Enloe and that 
his father called him "Cousin Abram." 



214 



There are no more intelligent people in 
North Carolina than the Enloes — Abraham's 
descendants ; they are among the State's fore- 
most citizens, but, like thousands of others, a 
busy life with someone of its manifold unavoid- 
able circumstances, has prevented their pre- 
serving the lines of descent. 

Thorough investigation, when we have 
time, we are confident will disclose the fact 
that Abraham, the father of Lincoln, was the 
son of Enoch Bnloe, of York District, South 
Carolina, unless there were three instead of 
two original brothers who settled there, and 
Abraham was the son of the unknown one.' 
The weight of evidence, however, is in favor 
of the theory that only two Scotsmen — Isaac 
and Enoch — settled in York District. All 
the North Carolina testimony being the same, 
that Abraham Enloe came to this State from 
Y^ork District, he must have been the son of 
one of these old school teachers. The En- 
loes — sturdy Scotsmen — are one family, rep- 
resentative, self-sustaining, self-respecting, pa- 
triotic, intelligent, progressive, of the best 
American citizenship, and worthy of Abra- 
ham Lincoln or any other man. 



215 

Through the gracious agency of Mr. John 
B. Burton, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a Lin- 
coln specialist, and by the generous courtesy 
of IMr. Levin C. Handy, we have obtained the 
following : 

"Washington, D. C, 

Nov. 26, 1903. 
Mr. John E. Burton : 

You are authorized to use in print, in a 
book now being published by James H. Cathey, 
any picture of Abraham Lincoln standing, 
sitting or otherwise, as shown by any nega- 
tive from which prints are made by me. 
Levin C. Handy, 
Nephew and Successor of 
M. B. Brady, 
449 Maryland Ave., S. W., 

Washington, D. C." 
The charming sitting picture of Mr. Lincoln 
was made by Mr. Brady for his private collec- 
tion, and Mr. Lincoln sat just to suit the artist. 
His nephew had never copied it until he 
did so for Mr. Burton . Mr. Brady made two 
proofs of this rare picture, and then by a mis- 
fortune dropped the plate and broke it into 



2l6 



forty pieces. Mr. Brady's nephew has been 
offered $100.00 for the other proof. 

Mr. Brady's nephew gave a rough print of 
it for public exhibition in the Presbyterian 
celebration of the 150th anniversary of that 
church recently held at Washington. The 
full length, standing likeness of Mr. Lincoln 
is from the actual, original, glass negative of 
Mr. Brady. 

Mr. Brady took practically all the Lincoln 
and other official photographs from i860 to 

1895-8. 

His nephew, Mr. Handy, is the only heir to 
all, and sold many of them in a lump to the 
United States government for $25,000. We, 
therefore, congratulate the public, through the 
generosity of Mr. Handy, by way of the good- 
ness of Mr. Burton, upon its great fortune in 
being permitted to admire these unique speci- 
mens of the accomplished artist upon the 
homely, handsome face and form of Abraham 
Lincoln, and we trust the student of this tra- 
dition will not neglect the physical compari- 
son thereby facilitated. 

James H. Cathey. 

Sylva, N. C. 



217 



PART II.— TRUTH RECOVERED FROM 
SUPPRESSED HISTORIC RECORD. 

After three years of diligent search the 
author has come into the temporary possession 
and use of the suppressed edition of the Life 
of Abraham Lincohi by William H. Herndon. 
It is hardly necessary to state that Mr. Hern- 
don, now deceased, was a citizen of Spring- 
field, Illinois, and the intimate, personal 
friend and law-partner of Mr. Lincoln, and 
that the partnership which extended over 
near a quarter of a century, was dissolved 
by the untimely death of the latter. 

The suppressed edition consists of three 
volumes of six hundred and thirty-eight 
pages, bound in dark blue cloth, with the fac- 
simile autograph of Mr. Liucoln imprinted in 
gold upon the back, and the face of Mr. Lin- 
coln, also in gold, upon the backbone of the 
book. The edition is abundantly illustrated. 
It is published by Messrs. Belford, Clark & Co. 

Mr. Jesse W. Weik was a collaborator upon 
these volumes and his name so appears in the 



2l8 



book. The edition is now rare to the ragged 
edge of extinction — a set selling for from 
fifteen to twenty-five dollars. 

The edition was suppressed because of some 
paragraphs therein that were objectionable to 
certain individuals. These paragraphs are 
known by a comparison of the original or 
suppressed edition and the new or current 
edition, consisting of two volumes bound in 
green cloth, embracing six hundred and seven- 
ty-nine pages, including a lengthy intro- 
duction by Mr. Horace White, and published 
by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. 

A comparative examination of the two edi- 
tions will show the matter appearing in the 
old or suppressed, and expurgated in the new 
or current edition, as follows : Volume i, 
pages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 — "His (Lincoln's) 
theory in discussing the matter of hereditary 
traits had been, that, for certain reasons, ille- 
gitimate children are oftentimes sturdier and 
brighter than those born in lawful wedlock ; 
and in his case, he believed that his better 
nature and finer qualities came from this broad- 
minded, unknown Virginian. The relation — 



219 

painful as it was — called up the recollection 
of his mother, and as the buggy jolted over 
the road (Mr. Herndon and Mr. Lincoln were 
on their way to court), he added : ' God bless 
my mother ; all that I am or ever hope to be I 
owe to her' ; and immediately lapsed into si- 
lence. Our interchange of ideas ceased, and 
we rode on for some time without exchanging 
a word. He w^as sad and absorbed. Burying 
himself in thought and musing, no doubt^ 
over the disclosure he had made, he drew 
round him a barrier which I feared to pene- 
trate. His words and melancholy tone made 
a deep impression on me. 

It was an experience I can never forget. 
As we neared the town of Petersburg we were 
overtaken by an old man, who rode beside us 
for awhile and entertained us wdth reminis- 
cences of days on the frontier. Lincoln was 
reminded of several Indiana stories, and by 
the time we had reached the unpretentious 
court house at our destination, his sadness had 
passed away. 

After Mr. Lincoln had obtained some 
prominence in the world, persons who knew 



220 

l)oth himself and his father were constantly 
pointing to the want of resemblance between 
the two. The old gentleman was not only 
deprived of energy and shiftless, and becanse 
of these persons were unable to account for 
the source of his son's ambition and intellect- 
ual superiority over other men. Hence the 
charge so often made in Kentucky that Mr. 
I^incoln was in reality the offspring of a Har- 
din or a Marshall, or that he had in his veins 
the blood of some of the noted families who 
held social and intellectual sway in the west- 
ern part of the State. These serious hints 
were the outgrowth of the campaign of i860, 
which was conducted with such unrelenting 
prejudice in Kentucky that in the county 
where lyincoln was born only six persons 
could be found who had the courage to vote 
for him. I remember that after his nomina- 
tion for the Presidency, I^incoln received from 
Kentucky many enquiries about his family 
and origin. This curiosity on the part of the 
people for one who had attained such promi- 
nence was perfectly natural, but it never 
pleasedjhim in the least ; in fact to one man 



221 



who was endeavoring to establish a relation- 
ship through the Hanks family he simply 
answered : ' You are mistaken about my 
mother,' without explaining the mistake or 
making further mention of the matter. 

Samuel Haycroft, the clerk of the court in 
Hardin county, invited him to visit the scenes 
of his birth and boyhood, which led him to 
say in a letter, June 4, i860 : ' You suggest 
that a visit to the place of my nativity might 
be pleasant to me. Indeed it would, but 
would it be safe ? Would not the people 
lynch me ?' 

That reports reflecting on his origin and 
descent should arise in a community in which 
he felt that his life was unsafe was by no 
means surprising. 

Regarding the paternity of Lincoln a great 
many surmises and a still larger amount of 
unwritten or, at least, unpublished, history 
have drifted into the currents of western lore 
and journalism. 

A number of such traditions are extant in 
Kentucky and other localities. Mr. Weik has 
spent considerable time investigating the 



222 



truth of a report current in Bourbon county,, 
Kentucky, that Thomas Lincoln^ for a consid- 
eration jrom one Abraham Inlow^ a miller 
there ^ assumed the paternity of the infant 
child of a poor girl itamed Nancy Hanks ; and 
after marriage removed with her to Washing- 
ton or Hardin county^ zvhere the son^ zvho was 
named Abraham^ after his real^ and Lincoln 
after his putative father^ was born. 

A prominent citizen of the town of Mount 
Sterling, in that State, who was at one time 
judge of the court and subsequently editor of 
a newspaper, and who was descended from 
the Abraham Inlow mentioned, has written a 
long argument in support of his alleged 
kinship through this source to Mr. Lincoln. 
He emphasizes the striking similarity in 
stature, facial features, and length of arms, 
notwithstanding the well-established fact that 
the first-born child of the real Nancy Hanks 
was not a boy, but a girl ; and that the mar- 
riage did not take place in Bourbon, but in 

Washington county." 

* * ^ 

Next to the biography of Mr. Lincoln by 




WESLKY M. BNLOE, Age 8i. 



223 

his law-partner above quoted from, for open 
method and frank and fearless statement, 
ranks the life of Mr. Lincoln by Ward H. 
Lamon. This work consists of one volume, 
in octavo form, and contains on extra large 
paper 547 pages, beside 14 pages of introduc- 
tory matter, and was published by Messrs. 
James R. Osgood & Co., of Boston. 

Mr. Lamon was the man who spirited Mr. 
Lincoln to his post at Washington when it 
was thought his life was sought. 

Personal fitness and circumstances familiar 
to the informed student of Abraham Lincoln 
Tendered Mr. Lamon peculiarly competent to 
write the truthful life of Mr. Lincoln. In ad- 
dition to his own rare materials he purchased 
for three thousand dollars the use of the orig- 
inal manuscript of Mr. Herndon. He labored 
against the hardship of having an unnatural 
public taboo his book. His book was vigor- 
ously attacked, but in the attack attention 
was called to the fact that Lincoln's biography, 
summed up, published to the world that 
" Abraham Lincoln was of illegitimate origin 
and lived and died an infidel." 



224 

This statement aroused inquiry ; people be- 
gan to search for old copies of Lamon's 
Lincoln until, at this writing, it is in such 
demand that a copy sells for from four dollars 
and fifty cents to twelve dollars at public auc- 
tion. 

This book was also suppressed. 

Apropos to the narrative of these pages I 
quote from this suppressed edition of Lamon's 
Life of Lincoln as follows : 

"His father's name was Thomas Lincoln 
and his mother's maiden name was Nancy 
Hanks. 

At the time of his birth they are supposed 
to have been married aboiU three years. 

Although there appears to have been little 
synnpathy or affection between Thomas and 
Abraham Lincoln, they were nevertheless con- 
nected by ties and associations which make the 
'previous history of Thomas Lincoln and his 
family a necessary part of any reasonably fnll 
biography of the great man who immortalised 
the name by wearing it." 

Further : " Dr. Holland says that the father 
of Thomas Lincoln was named Abraham, but 



225 

gives 110 aiitliorit}' for his statement, and is as 
likely to be wrong as to be right. The 
Hankses, Dennis and John, who passed a great 
part of their lives in the company of Thomas 
Lincoln, tell us that the name of the father 
of Thomas Lincoln was Mordecai, and so 
also does Col. Chapman, w^ho married Thomas 
Lincoln's step-daughter. Dr. Holland says, 
also, that the father of Thomas Lincoln had 
four brothers, John, Jacob, Isaac and Thomas." 
Further: "Thomas Lincoln (Abraham's 
father) was comparatively short and stout, 
standing about five feet ten inches in his 
shoes. His hair dark, face round and full, 
complexion brown. He was a vagrant ; in 
politics a Democrat ; in religion nothing and 
everything — a Free Will Baptist in Kentucky, 
a Presbyterian in Indiana and a Campbellite 
in Illinois. He was variously called Lincoln, 
Linckhern and Linckhorn. He was married 
sometime in 1806 to Nancy Hanks. It is 
true that Nancy did not live with her uncle. 
It is admitted by all the old residents of the 
place that they were honestly married, but 
precisely when or ivliere no one can tell, Dil- 



226 

igent and thorough researches by the most 
competent persons have failed to discover any 
trace of the fact in the records of Hardin and 
adjoining counties. The license and the 
minister's return in the marriage of Thomas 
Lincoln and Sarah Johnson^ his second wife^ 
were easily found in the place where the law 
required them to be, but of Nancy Hanks' 
marriage there, exists no evidence but that of 
mutual acknoivledgrnent and cohabitation,^^ 

Again : " It is not likely that Tom Lincoln 
cared a straw about his (Abraham's) educa- 
tion. He had none himself and is said to 
have admired muscle more than mind. Never- 
theless, as Abraham's sister was going to 
school for a few days at a time, he was sent 
along, as Dennis Hanks remarks, more to bear 
her company than with any expectation or 
DESIRE that he would learn much himself.''^ 

Again : " Being a wanderer by nature he 
(Thomas Lincoln) began to long for a change. 
His decision, however, was hastened by cer- 
tain troubles between him and one Abraham 
Enlow. These troubles culminated in a des- 
perate combat between the two men. They 



227 

fought like savages; but Lincoln obtained a 
signal and permanent advantage by biting ofl 
the nose of his antagonist, so that he went 
bereft all the days of his life, and published 
his audacity and its punishment wherever he 
showed his face. But the affray, and the fame 
of it, made Lincoln more anxious than ever 
to escape from Kentucky. He resolved, there- 
fore, to leave these scenes forever, and seek a 
roof-tree beyond the Ohio. 

It has pleased some of Mr. Lincoln's biog- 
raphers to represent this removal of his father 
as a flight from the taint of slavery. Nothing 
could be further from the truth. There were 
not at the time more than fifty slaves in all 
Hardin county, which then composed a vast 
area of territory. It was practically a free 
community. Lincoln's more fortunate rela- 
tives in other parts of the State were slave- 
holders ; and there is not the slightest evi- 
dence that he ever disclosed any conscientious 
scruples concerning the institution." 

Again : " The lives of his father and mother, 
and the history and character of the family 
before their settlement in Indiana, were topics 



228 



tip07t which Mr. Lincoln 7iever spoke but with 
great rehtctance and significant reserve. In 
his family Bible he kept a register of births, 
marriages and deaths, every entry being care- 
fnlly made in his own hand-writing. It con- 
tains the date of his sister's birth and his own ; 
of the marriage and death of his sister ; of the 
death of his mother ; and of the birth and 
death of Thomas Lincoln ; the rest of the rec- 
ord is almost wholly devoted to the Johnstons 
and their numerous descendants and connec- 
tions. It has not a word about the Hanks or 
the Sparrows. It shows the marriage of Sally 
Bush, first with Daniel Johnston, and then with 
Thomas Lincoln ** but it is entirely silent as to 
the marriage of his own mother. It does not 
even give the date of her birth^ but barely rec- 
ognizes her EXISTENCE and demise to make the 
vacancy which was speedily filled by Sarah 
Johnston.'' 

And again : "An artist was painting his 
portrait and asked him for a sketch of his life. 
He gave him this brief memorandum : ' I was 
born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, 
Kentucky, at a -point within the now county 



229 



of La Rue, a mile or a mile and a half from 
where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents 
being dead and my own memory not serving, 
I know of no means of identifying the precise 
locality. It was on Nolin Creek.' '' 

And again : " To the compiler of the 'Dic- 
tionary of Congres ' he gave the following : 
^Born Feb. 9, 1809, ^^ Hardin county, Ken- 
tucky. Education defective. Profession a 
lawyer. Have been a Captain of Volunteers 
in the Black- Hawk war. Postmaster at a 
very small office. Four times a member of 
the Illinois Legislature, and was a member of 
the Lower House of Congress.' " 

Further : "To a campaign biographer who 
applied for particulars of his early history, he 
replied that they could be of no interest. Mr. 
Lincoln communicated some facts to this biog- 
rapher about his ancestry which he did not 
wish published then." 

Again : " Life among the Hankses the Lin- 
colns and the Enlows was a long way below 
life among the Bushes, and Sarah was the 
proudest of the Bushes.'' 

And again : " We are told by Col. Chapman 



230 



that Abe's father, Tom lyincoln, habitually 
treated him with great barbarity. Mr. lyincoln 
through life took little notice of his father." 
And again : "In the gallery of family por- 
traits painted by Dennis " (Hanks) " every face 
looks down upon us with the serenity of inno- 
cence and virtue. There is no spot on the 
fame of any of them.. No family could have 
a more vigorous or chivalrous defender than 
he, or one who repelled with greater scorn any 
rumor to their discredit. The Knlow story ! 
Dennis almost scorned to confute it ; but, 
when he did get at it, he settled it by a mag- 
nificent exercise of invective genius. He 
knew ' this Abe Enlow ' well, he said, and he 
had been^dead precisely fifty-five years. But, 
whenever the truth can be told without dam- 
age to the character of a Lincoln or a Hanks, 
Dennis will tell it candidjy enough, provided 
there is [^no temptation to magnify himself* 
His testimony, however, has been sparingly 
used throughout these pages ; and no state- 
ment has-been taken from him, unless it was 
more or ^;. less corroborated "by some one else. 
The better part of his evidence Mr. Herndon 





gi'^^. 


' S^SrP^'' ^^w^^^^-lyi?'^ ( ■? 


g^^ , ''^rl^^'^-" 


^^^-%H 


rP^^^ 


^MtjmP^M^M 


41^^^^%%' 




^fe3\ 


^^E^^^^H^^E^^irall^''' 


hL^ 


^^^I's-" ,^^^|^^HS^^^^^^^I 






."^ 



Lincoln in Standing Publuie, with Allen Tinkerton on liis right 
and Gen. LaFayette C. Baker on his left, heads of Detective 
Departments. 




WESLEY ENLOE 
At the Age of 8r. Son of Abraham Eni.oe. 

The most striking similarity between Mr. Ivincoln and 
Wesley Enloe is their physical formation and charac- 
teristics, which may be seen from the above compara- 
tive standing- likeness. 



231 

took the precaution of reading carefully to 
John Hanks, who pronounced it substantially 
true; and that circumstance gives it undeni- 
able value." 



I quote from " Horton's Youth's History of 
the Great Civil War." Mr. Horton was a cit- 
izen of New York. In his biographical sketch 
of Abraham Lincon, among other things, he 
says : 

'' He had the misfortune not to know who 
his father was; and his mother, alas, was a 
person to reflect no honor upon her child. 
Launched into the world an outcast, and 
started on the road of being without parental 
care, and without the advantage of even a 
common-school education, he certainly was 
entitled to great credit for gaining even the 
limited mental culture which he possessed. 
He ran away from his wretched home at the 
age of nine, to escape the brutal treatment of 
the man who had married his mother and was 
forced to get his bread by working on a flat- 
boat on the Mississippi." 

In the preface to the first volume of his biog- 



232 

raphy Mr. .Herndon says : "With a view to 
throwing a light upon some attributes of Lin- 
coln's character heretofore obscure, and thus 
contributing to the great fund of history these 
volumes are given to the world. 

It is alike just to his memory and the proper 
legacy of mankind that the whole truth con- 
cerning him should be known. 

If the story of his life is truthfully and 
courageously told — nothing colored or sup- 
pressed ; nothing false either written or sug- 
gested — the reader will see and feel the real 
presence of the man. 

If, on the other hand, the story is colored or 
the facts in any degree suppressed, the reader 
will be not only misled, but imposed upon as 
well. 

At last the tmth will come and no man fteed 
hope to evade it. 

Lincoln's character, I am certain will bear 
close scrutiny. I am not afraid of you in this 
direction. Don't let anything deter you fiom 
digging to the bottom. In drawing the por- 
trait tell the world what the skeleton was with 
Lincoln. What gave him that peculiar mel- 



^33 

aiicholy. What cancer had he inside. Espe- 
cial attention is given to the history of his 
youth and early manhood ; and while dwelling 
on this portion of his life the liberty is taken 
to insert many things that would be Gmitcd or 
suppressed in other places where the cast-iron 
rules that govern magazine writing prevail. 
Mr. Lincoln was my warm, devoted friend. I 
always loved him, and revere his name to this 
day. My purpose to tell the truth about him 
need occasion no apprehension ; for I know 
that God's naked truth, as Carlyle puts it, can 
never injure the fame of Abraham Lincoln. 

Some persons will doubtless object to the 
narrative of certain facts which appear here 
for the first time, and which they contend 
should be consigned to the tomb. Their pre- 
tense is that no good can come from such 
ghastly exposures. To such over-sensitive 
souls, if any such exist, my answer is that 
these facts are indispensable to a full knowl- 
edge of Mr. Lincoln in all the walks of life." 

The forgoing is Mr. Herndon's apology for 
writing his faithful life of Abraham Lincoln. 
He savshe loved Mr. Lincoln and revered his 



234 

name. Moreover he says he was the personal 
depository of the larger part of the most val- 
uable Lincolniana in existence. 

Hear what no less authority than Mr. Horace 
White says of Mr. Herndon's peculiar qualifi- 
cations for the task of writing a true charac- 
terization of Abraham Lincoln : " What Mr. 
Lincoln was after he became President can be 
best understood by knowing what he was be- 
fore. The world owes more to William H. 
Herndon for this particular knowledge than 
to all other persons taken together. It is no 
exaggeration to say that his death removed 
from earth the person who, of all others, had 
most thoroughly searched the sources of Mr. 
Lincoln's biography and had most attentively, 
and also lovingly, studied his character. He 
wasnineyearsthe junior of Mr. Lincoln. Their 
partnership began in 1843 and it continued 
until it was dissolved by the death of the senior 
member. Between them there was never an 
unkind word or thought. 

As a portraiture of the man Lincoln — and 
this is what we look for above all things else in 
a biography — I venture to think that Mr, 
Herndon's work will never be surpassed.'' 



235 



PART III.— FURTHER FOLK-LORE. 

I quote from a letter received from Rev. 
S. E. Kennedy, of Davis, Indian Territory, 
of date July 7, 1898. 

The Davis Weekly News, of his home town, 
says of him : " Rev. S. E. Kennedy is pastor 
of the Christian Church here, and is loved 
and esteemed universally by all who have the 
pleasure of knowing him. He wrote : 

" 'My grandfather and grandmother, John 
and Fannie Kennedy, lived neighbor to Abra- 
ham Enloe in North Carolina, and were well 
acquainted with both Abraham Enloe and 
Nancy Hanks. My grandmother was born 
about 1775. Her story of the Enloe-Hanks 
embroglio was substantially as follows : ' The 
father of Nancy Hanks was a drunkard and 
was so cruel to his wife and children that he 
was imprisoned and made to make shoes as a 
punishment. The mother of Nancy Hanks 
was forced because of her inability to support 
them to bind her children out. Abraham 
Enloe took Nancy, and a man by the name 



236 

of Pratt took Mandy. Mr. and Mrs. Pratt 
were kind to Mandy and taught her to card 
and spin and weave. Mandy did well and 
married Samuel Henson and moved across 
the mountains. Abraham Enloe became en- 
tangled with Nancy and caused her to be 
taken to Kentucky and to be married to Tom 
Lincoln, who kept a stillhouse there. Abra- 
ham Enloe promised to give Tom Lincoln 
five hundred dollars, a wagon and pair of 
mules if he would marry Nancy Hanks, but 
after Lincoln had got drunk and attempted to 
kill Abraham Enloe, they compromised, and 
Enloe gave Lincoln a mule, a mare and fifteen 
dollars in money, whereupon Lincoln took 
Nancy and little Abe back to Kentucky, and 
I never saw them more.' " 

Mr. Kennedy says : '' My grandnjother lived 
to be near ninety, dying about the year 1866. 
She could neither read nor write, but pos- 
sessed the most perfect memory I have ever 
observed. She knew x\braham Enloe before 
and after they moved across the mountains. 
Whether my grandparents came with Enloe 
when he migrated to North Carolina, I do not 



'2'11 



know. What was meant by 'across the moun- 
tains ' I have forgotten, if I ever knew. 

" My father and mother moved to We- 
tumpka, Alabama, in the early 40's. I was 
born at Wetumpka. Not long after the re- 
moval of my parents to Wetumpka one of 
the Enloes also moved from the old North 
Carolina home, and settled two miles east of 
Wetumpka. He raised a large family. He 
is dead, but the family still reside there." 



I quote from a letter of Mr. James D. Enloe 
of date May 17, 1899. Mr. Enloe's address 
is Cedartown, Georgia. He wrote : " During 
the war, wdiile I was around Petersburg, Va., 
I was reading the Richmond Dispatch and 
ran across a communication by John L. Hel- 
lem. Hellem was my father's sister's son. 
The article stated that Abraham Lincoln was 
the illegitimate son of Abraham Enloe, an 
uncle of mine. If he wrote the truth you 
must be mistaken. But you may be right. 
My grandfather was named Abraham Enloe 
and came from either North Carolina or 
South Carolina and settled on Nolen Creek, 



238 



Hardin County, Kentucky. Nancy Hanks 
married Lincoln in that county. I was per- 
sonally acquainted with Lincoln. I am now 
in my seventy- sixth year." 



I quote from a letter from Doctor Thomas 
H. Hammond of date July 19, 1899. Dr. 
Hammond then resided in Wildwood, Florida. 
He wrote : " When I was in Camp Wickliff, 
Ky., in January, 1862, I heard Lieut.-Col. 
Wilder, of the 17th Indiana Regiment, say 
that Abraham Lincoln was an illegitimate. 
Col. Wilder was a very important man with 
Gen. William Nelson ; going over the coun- 
try giving Gen. Nelson information about the 
roads, bridges, etc., and he was over the coun- 
try where Lincoln had lived. In December, 
1878, I went to Kansas and remained in that 
State for six years. While there a Baptist 
preacher, who hailed from Kentucky, asked 
me if I knew that Lincoln was an illegiti- 
mate. I told him I had heard it. In 1884 I 
came to Florida. Professor Borden was in 
the Confederate Army, and in that country 
(in Kentucky where Lincoln was born) during 



239 



the war. He had heard that Lincohi was an 
illegitimate, and related facts that aroused my 
interest and curiosity. The Baptist preacher 
above mentioned, meantime, had come to 
Florida, but had gone to Taylorsville, Ken- 
tucky. I wrote to him asking him who the 
reputed father of Abraham Lincoln was. He 
did not know himself, coming from a differ- 
ent part of the State, but his wife and mother 
did ; his father was Abraham Inlow.'^ 



I quote from a letter of Mr. Nat R. Ander- 
son, of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, of date May 
28, 1899. He wrote : " I am a native of the 
Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Rocking- 
ham county. That State is where the Lincolns 
sprang from. Tom Lincoln's father migrated 
from there to Kentucky. Many of them are 
still there. They pronounced the name there 
Link-horn. I never could understand how so 
great and good a man as " Old Abe " could 
have descended from such a low breed and 
entirely worthless a vagabond as Tom Lin- 
coln. I have read most of the lives of Lincoln- 
The best were by Ward H. Lamon and W. H. 



240 



Herndou, his law-partner, but these were sup- 
pressed. 

I am now an old man past three score and 
ten. I remember most of the stirring events 
since Jackson's second term ; all the leading 
men and measures, and notwithstanding our 
difference in party affiliation, I frankly con- 
fess that no man has interested me mere, 
from his strange, eventful and lowly life, than 
Abraham Lincoln. 

You are undoubtedly due the thanks of 
every lover of truth and respectability in the 
land in finding for the immortal Railsplitter 
an honorable paternity and strong and well- 
defined ancestry." 



The following is extracted from a letter re- 
ceived from G. J. Davie, of Nevada, Texas, 
bearing date May 5, 1899 : "I was raised on 
the border of Christian county, Kentucky, on 
the Tennessee side. I knew many of the En- 
loes and have all my life known that Lincoln 
was the son of old Abe Enloe. 

I was educated at the University of North 
Carolina, class of '52.'' 



241 



Following is the full text of a letter of Judge 
James Shaw upon his perusal of a copy of the 
first edition of this Genesis : 

Mount Carroll, III., March 19, 1900. 
^^Jkfy Dear Mr. Cathey : 

'' Your little book was duly received. I 
have read and re-read it with deep interest. 
I always knew there was a mystery aboiU the 
early life of Lincoln.^ but did not know very 
well what it was. Your book gives me to un- 
derstand many things I have seen and heard 
about this wonderful man. 

The address I have been giving a few 
times in this part of Illinois is only partly in 
type. It is mostly an oral address. When I 
was a boy and later a young man Lincoln 
practiced law in the courts of Cass county 
where my father lived. I attended them a 
good deal. Heard him try the Armstrong 
murder case at Beardstown, and was present 
when the jury brought in their verdict of 
acquittal, and witnessed the memorable 
scene which then took place. He w^as often 
at my father's house in those days. Later 



242 



when I spent five years at Illinois College, 
Jacksonville, 111., he came often to the conrts 
there, and I made a habit of attending the 
trials in that county ; I also used to be about 
his office in Springfield a good deal when he 
was in full practice there. The man had a 
wonderful fascination for me, and took some 
pains to advise me in preparing myself to be- 
come a lawyer. His strange, weird, sad face ; 
his wonderful personality, made a lasting im- 
pression on me. In my address I have simply 
talked about him from my personal recollec- 
tions and from close observation of the man 
during his rise to greatness. I am full of the 
subject and have interested our people up here 
a good deal with these personal recollections, 
and descriptions of the man and his mental 
and physical characteristics. 

I would be pleased to hear from you at any 
time as to anything in the line you are work- 
ing up so interestingly. 

Very truly yours, 

James Shaw." 



243 



Rev. Asahel Enloe was for a short while a 
resident of Murphy, N. C. Since the date of 
his letter both he and his son with whom he 
lived have moved from the State, and it is the 
writer^s information that the old gentleman is 
dead. His son's whereabouts cannot be now 
located. The writer enjoyed a very brief ac- 
quaintance with Rev. Mr. Enloe while he 
resided in Murphy. He was not tall of stat- 
nre, but possessed of the proverbially large 
Enloe nose and ears. In facial form particu- 
larly from a profile view, was the almost exact 
counterpart of the similar view of Abraham Lin- 
coln. His features were homely but strangely 
pleasant and prepossessing. He was a gentle- 
man — educated, refined, but familiar as one's 
grandmother. There was a twinkle of humor 
about the eye (then blind), and a bubble of 
homely mirth burst ever and anon in the 
stream of his conversation. I have often 
deeply deplored my inability to have known 
more of him personally. 

I am resolved to procure for a subsequent 
edition of this genesis a portrait of him for 
further illustration of the theory of this vol- 



244 

lime, if there be one in existence and to be had^ 
Following is the answers to questions in an 
interview which I had with him : 

My age is 8i. My father was named Gil- 
bert. My grandfather was named Isaac. My 
father had two brothers, Asahel and Nathaniel. 
Father and uncle Nathaniel lived and died in 
York District, South Carolina. They were 
school teachers. Uncle Asahel moved to 
Southern Illinois. My profession is Presby- 
terian minister — preaching since 1851. I 
never held any political office. I graduated 
at Davidson College, N. C, in 1847, also at- 
tended Theological Seminary at Columbia, 
South Carolina. Most prominent character- 
istics ]Dhysically of the Enloes are big ears 
and long noses. My father and Uncle Asahel 
were teachers. 

My grandfather was a soldier in the Revo_ 
lutionary war ; was wounded at Hook's defeat, 
rendering him unfit for further service during 
war in army. My father was justice of the 
peace for many years. My oldest brother, 
Isaac, was a lawyer and practiced his profess- 
ion in Mississippi ; he was delegate to two 



245 

Democratic conventions. M}^ brother John 
held office of circuit court clerk in York Dis- 
trict, S. C, for several terms. 

I first knew Abraham Enloe (alleged father 
of Lincoln) about 1827. I knew him well, also 
three of his sons — Aseph, Alfred and Scroup* 
His sons were all tall, slender and muscular. 

Alfred learned the blacksmith trade at my 
father's and was a pleasant man — full of good 
humor. Can't tell our relation. My father 
called him "cousin Abram." He was a 
trader in horses, etc., and in his yearly visits 
South always visited my father. It was re- 
lated of him by a Mr. Kennedy, a kinsman, 
that if he had every dollar but one and knew 
that by riding across the continent he could 
get that one, he would make the trip. He 
loved to practice jokes and to laugh at their 
results. He was about six feet in height. 
Never heard of the tradition until after Lin- 
coln was nominated for the Presidency when 
I heard the rumor that Lincoln's father was 
named Enloe — I was then iii IMississippi. 

AsAHEL Enloe. 

Murphy, N. C, May 15, 1899. 



246 

Following is undoubtedly one of the best if 
not the best pen portrait of Abraham lyincoln 
in existence. 

It is by Professor Frank M. Vancil who 
was, at the writing of this letter (this to the 
writer), Superintendent of the State Univer- 
sity Preparatory High School at Lewistown, 
Montana. 

Prof. Vancir was born and reared to man- 
hood in the same neighborhood with Mr. 
lyincoln in Illinois, was intimately acquainted 
with him. This physical description Prof. 
Vancil was so generous as to transcribe from 
the manuscript of his school history of the 
United States which he was then engaged in 
writing: 

" He was six feet and four inches in height, 
the length of his legs being out of all propor- 
tion to his body. When he sat on a chair he 
seemed no taller than the average man, meas- 
uring from the chair to the crown of his head 
but his knees were high in front. He weighed 
about 180 poundsf but was thin through the 
breast and had the general appearance of a 
consumptive. Standing he stooped slightly 



247 

forward, and sitting he nsnally crossed his 
long legs or threw them over the arms of the 
chatr. His head was long and tall from the 
base of the brain and the eyebrow ; his fore- 
head high and narrow, inclining backward as 
it rose. His ears were very large and stood 
out; eyebrows heavy, j^^tting forward over 
small, sunken, blue eyes; nose large, long, 
slightly Roman and blunt ; chin projecting 
far^'and sharp, curved upward to meet a thick 
lower lip which hung downward; cheeks 
flabby and sunken, the loose skin falling in 
folds^ a mole on one cheek, and an uncom- 
monly large Adam's apple in his throat. His 
hair was dark brown, stiff and unkempt; 
complexion dark, skin yellow, shriveled and 
leathery. Every feature of the anan— the 
hollow eyes with the dark rings beneath ; the 
long, sallow, cadaverous face, his whole air 
and walk showed that he was a man of 

sorrow\" 

Extract from letter of Prof. ErankM. Van- 
cil, of Lewistown, Mont., of date July i6, 
1899. 



248 



PART IV.— THE BURTON ORATION. 
author's introduction to MR. burton's 

ORATION. 

The fame of "The True Genesis of Abra- 
ham Lincoln " having gone to that beautiful 
Northwestern villa-on-the-lakes — Lake Gen- 
eva, Wisconsin, it came under the e3^e of Mr. 
John B. Burton, a successful financier and 
man of letters, residing there. The subject- 
matter of the little volume at once engaged 
his serious attention. It had once again fallen 
under the eye of a peculiarly qualified critic. 
It had invited the frank and fearless scrutiny 
of, peradventure, the^ best informed student 
of Abraham Lincoln living. Mr. Burton, 
as he says in his oration, had seen Abraham 
Lincoln and heard his voice. He is and has 
ahvays been a steadfast believer in all of the 
principles and doctrines of which Mr. Lincoln 
was the exponent. He has always been that 
which Mr. Lincoln, in the years which led 
up to the war and even until the end of that 
dread crisis was in sight, from policy was not^ 




JOHN E. BURTON. 



249 

an ultra-abolitionist. There has not grown 
up a citizen of the Republic that is a more 
loyal Union man. There is no more devoted 
friend of the broken hero of the armies of the 
North than he, and the Grand Army of tlie 
Republic whose reunions he has more than 
once enjoyed the honor of addressing, has in 
him a substantial support. But, Mr. Burton, 
in all that is included in the terms man and 
citizen, finds his ideal in Abraham Lincoln. 
In this conception he is cheerfully joined by 
the majority of his contemporaries in the 
North, by many of every section of the Repub- 
lic, and by not a few in every land under the 
sun. And he is not a blind hero-worshiper. 
As above mentioned, he is familiar with his 
hero. There may be other men as well in- 
formed upon particular epochs or phases of 
Abraham Lincoln's life, but we fearlessly assert 
that there is not a man living who is as full of 
all that pertains to him — as versatile in the 
wide domain of Liticolniana, as is he. He is 
the possessor of the rarest, if not the largest, 
private collection of works of biography alone 
upon Lincoln in existence, the number of vol- 



250 

limes now being quite in advance of one 
thousand. His portraits, paintings, photo- 
graphs ; his autographs, mementoes and 
iniique and costly souvenirs, are by the score 
and hundred. This rare collection, it is need- 
less to say, represents much means and pains, 
and his unmatched store of knowledge is the 
result of many years of penetrative study 
aided by the finest lights, and all combined are 
the product of the labor of love. 

After reading the first edition of these pages, 
Mr. Burton, being convinced of the truth of 
the theory therein promulgated, opened a cor- 
respondence with the writer that is now 
ripened into personal friendship. He ordered 
one hundred and fifty copies for circulation 
among his friends of the Northwest and gave 
the book his unstinted endorsement. He 
dived into his deep-sea Lincoln treasure and 
brought up the suppressed three-volume Life 
of the President by his old-time friend and 
law partner. He rummaged the musty tomes 
of a more recent alcove and hauled forth the 
one- volume Life, by Ward Hill Lamon, smoth- 
ered in infancy by aristocratic interdict. These 



251 



he at once expressed to the writer that the 
truths that have been temporarily consigned 
to a quasi-oblivion might be vouchsafed pop. 
ular access in the light of day. For the above 
and other valuable Lincolniana, as well as for 
much highly esteemed information by corres- 
pondence, we acknowledge unrequited but 
grateful indebtedness to Mr. Burton, but 
especially are we his debtor for the oration 
which follows. 

It has been our inestimable fortune to read 
most of the great eulogies, characterizations and 
pen portraits of iVbraham Lincoln. The stand- 
ard are those by Emerson, Ingersoll and Wat- 
terson. These three are esteemed classics in 
the range of eulogistic Lincolniana. Like all 
the work of these three gentlemen, they are 
finished — every stone is hewn v/ithout a jar 
and laid in its exact place without a flaw, but 
their structures are rather fantastic than sub- 
stantial in effect. 

The oration of Mr. Burton is not so much 
the production of a skilled craftsman who had 
had his task assigned by assumed public con- 
sensus, as it is the product of the self-appointed 



252 

duty of the thoroughly equipped laboier in 
the vineyard of usefulness. Neither Emerson, 
Ingersoll nor Watterson has evinced the close 
familiarity with the minutest detail of Abra- 
ham Lincoln's entire career that Mr. Burton 
evinces in this oration, nor have e'ither treated 
that career in a manner nearly so heart-thrilling- 
and practical. It is true the utterance from 
beginning to end shows the author to be of 
the ultra class of Lincoln admirers, but this 
tendency does not neutralize the salutary effect 
of the general estimate. The oration as a 
whole is unexampled as a fidelic echo of the 
popular estimate of Abraham Lincoln. It is 
particularly the truest voicing of the public 
mind and heart of the North toward Abraham 
Lincoln that has yet been articulated. It pos- 
sesses in an eminent degree the element that 
will insure popularit}^— the element of sim- 
plicity — plain, primal ideas clothed in terse 
and telling Saxon. This was the means em- 
ployed by Mr. Lincoln himself in reaching the 
popular heart. It is sweeping yet detailed ; 
prophetic yet practical ; imaginative yet true. 
It is terse, ornate, eloquent; critical, reminis- 



253 

cent and profound. His entire portrayal is one 
of exceptional vividness and power — the out- 
lines are strong, well sustained and faithful, 
and then each minor feature is brought out 
with the touch of a master — a man conver- 
sant with his theme. Suddenly and without 
warning you laugh, or cry, or muse as you 
traverse the way made immortal by his foot- 
steps. It will live as long as men speak the 
language of liberty and union, of gratitude and 
love : — 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

AN ORATION, BY JOHN E. BURTON, OF LAKE 
GENEVA, WIS. 

The character of Abraham Lincoln stands 
so high above all possible wrong-doing that 
honesty was never mentioned or thought of 
as a virhte in him. 

He was not only the best product of pure 
American civilization which his century pro- 
duced, but he was, all in all, the best public 
man and sincerest statesman who has ever 
figured in the destiny of this nation or in the 
history of the world. 



254 

To all right-minded Americans lie is the 
ripe and rounded product of what every ma?z 
woiUd like to be^ and he will therefore remain, 
through all time, the symbol of perfected 
character. The whole world loves Lincoln 
because he did what the world knows was 
right, and he avoided doing what the world 
knows to be wrong, and it is therefore doubt- 
ful if any human being will ever again hold 
a similar position of greatness in a similar and 
transcendent epoch, or ever fulfill the world's 
expectations so completely, as did Ivincoln. 

His fame grows so steadily, so perfectly, so 
naturally, and so mightily, and the very fiber 
of his character comes out so brilliantly as 
the search-light of time reveals him from every 
possible point of view that the fear among 
thoughtful men is, that, with the lapse of 
centuries, his fame may pass the boundary 
line allotted to flesh and blood and become 
obscured by entering the realm of the mythi- 
cal, where he may be lost to the world of 
struggling men among the gods and the myths 
which always inhabit the past. 

He was the child of Love before he was the 



255 

child of Law. Born, not only in poverty, but 
surrounded by want and suffering ; favored in 
nothing; wanting in everything which makes 
up the joys of life, he trudged, as a child, the 
trail of sorrow, and was the playmate of 
Grief, and always above and around his mys- 
terious young life there hung the shadow of a 
dark and mystic cloud. 

It was a literal truth that "he had not 
where to lay his head," and while he did not 
eat the "locust and wild honey," and while 
his raiment was not of "camel's hair," yet 
his clothing was, almost exclusively, "the 
skin of wild beasts," from his buckskin pants 
to the ponderous coon skin cap. A meaner 
or darker origin cannot well be imagined. 
Not one ray of genuine hope can be discov- 
ered to light his childhood. Nature seems to 
have bruised and hurt him so that in man- 
hood he might gird himself to bind up the 
wounds of a bleeding nation. She seems to 
have handicapped and loaded his patient soul 
that he might justly hate the oppressors of 
men in his loftiest estate. She seems to have 
starved him that he might the better feel the 



356 

hunger and the yearnings of a downtrodden 
race. His eyes were allowed to look at the 
sunlight through the greased paper windows 
of the primitive hut and log school house, 
that he might, in his conquering prime, ap- 
preciate the glor}^ of the noonday sun of uni- 
versal freedom. Nature was his Mother, his 
Teacher, his playmate, his All, and with a 
yearning that was never satiate he grew in 
stature among the grand old trees of the for- 
est ever surrounded by bird song, flower and 
fern, and with unsandled feet he walked the 
rough trail of the pioneer boy straight through 
over rock and glen to the mountain top of per- 
fect Sincerity, and as a man stood as natural 
as a child, yet possessed all the powers and 
knowledge of his sex and his race in their 
fullness and purity. Almost wdthout play- 
mates, he was the companion of unadorned 
Nature, and with the intuition of the child of 
Nature^ his heart expanded to the influence 
of the flight of fowl, the basking fish, the 
habits of the timid deer, the ways of the 
wild turkey, and bounded with joy in the 
season of bloom of the wild crab and the 



257 

sumach, and resting lazily in the autumn 
and Indian summer among the ripening nuts 
and the purpling grape, he studied with joy 
strange and profound the wondrous move- 
ments of planet, moon and star. With a 
growth exceeding six feet and four inches 
he found himself almost like one awakening 
from a dream, a giant in stature with mus- 
cles of iron made memorable by felling the 
tree and splitting the rail for sturdy use. 
' Thus he matured, like a prophet of old, 
and kept ever close to the great heart of na- 
ture. As a matured man he could not sleep 
when the storm had blown the nest and the 
nestlings from the tree until he had restored 
them to the mother bird, and could not rest 
in the prime of his matchless manhood until 
a race of four millions of fathers, mothers 
and children w^ere restored to tlieir natural 
rights after the thunder storm of war had 
passed, and if we do not anchor his mortal 
memory to the ocean bed of solid fact and 
history, I fear the day will yet come when 
some wild burst in the ruffled flow of human 
turmoil will claim him as a Christ. Scarcely an 



258 

attribute of the divine character is wanting 
in this unique man, who, in all the loneliness 
of his early life, was unconsciously schooled, 
trained, perfected and graduated in all that 
was honest, natural, capable and kind. As a 
flat-boatman in the city of New Orleans he 
saw, for the first time, negro boys and girls 
and young women put up and sold as chattels 
upon the auction block, and then and there 
the mordant sunk deep into his very soul, and 
he said to his companion, " Thafs wrongs and 
if ever I get a chance to hit it^ by God^ Pit hit 
it hardy The "painted lizard" of human 
slavery had been photographed forever on his 
mind and memory, and he bided his time 
with the patience of a God until the day 
should come and until the hour had struck 
when, with a single blow, he could make good 
that oath, and so, later in life, we see him, 
amid the billows and blood of war, as he 
calmly says, "Wait and see the salvation of 
God " — and so it is that the hnman race is 
waitifi^ to see^ as the years go by, the salva- 
tion of eternal right forever triumphant over 
wrong and made possible by his jpatie7ice and 
perfect hiunanity. 



259 

His patience, however, did not weaken him 
or class him as quiescent, for when imposed 
upon and crowded tow^ard insult or cowardice, 
or if his cause, when justly stated, was as- 
sailed by injustice or brutality the sleeping 
lion showed his fangs and his giant wrath 
seldom found any bully rash enough to stand 
in his way when he accepted a challenge. 
His powerful exhibition when forced by taunt 
to twice throw the champion Need ham at 
Wabash Point ; his righteous rage at New 
Salem when the leader of the bullies of Clary's 
Grove, Jack Armstrong, tried by foul means, 
to get the advantage over him, and again 
when his excited men in the Black Hawk 
War attempted to kill the friendly Indian, 
defying practically the brawn and muscle of 
the whole regiment, all prove his practical 
manliness, if occasion demanded, and such 
was his physical prowess that few men in all 
that Western country ever wished to dispute 
his standing. 

The great dream of the centuries seems to 
have blossomed in his eventful life, and the 
more we learn of it the more we come to 



26o 



realize and to know that in him was the Per- 
fect Man in the sanest and soundest sense of 
the word, physically, mentally and morally. 
Poverty made him good ; suffering made him 
great ; circumstances made him President ; 
fidelity made him beloved ; courage made him 
heroic and martyrdpm made him immortal. 

You may search the minutest records of 
recorded time and you cannot find another 
character who made so few mistakes during 
the chaos of such trying ordeals, or who pos- 
sessed on all great occasions that sublimity of 
faith and courage in action, as mark and 
make the character of Abraham Lincoln ; 
neither could you find another man who 
could control, and even guide to glory, all 
his impetuous subordinates in the heat of 
conflict and yet without offence compel them 
to unconscious obedience in the fulfillment of 
a destiny which he alone could read in the 
dusk of deathless performance. 

The record of this world does not show an- 
other character wdio was schooled in almost 
continuous failure i7t youth and early man- 
hood^ in order that he might the better serve 



26l 



as the successful and great commander in the 
most momentous epoch of human progress. 
No where in the library of nations can you 
find another character so varied in ail experi- 
ences, and yet where every experience was 
clearly given for the perfect formation of a 
character unique and matchless. lyook back 
over forty years and see a boy ever obedient, 
even where obedience was not especially com- 
mendable, yet always obedient ; as a son, 
wise, thoughtful and obliging; as a pupil al- 
most a prodigy, and with a burning zeal fur 
useful knowledge beyond all precedent ; as a 
boatman, capable of utilizing the rough ex- 
perience of the Mississippi river ; as a soldier 
in the Black Hawk War, little better than a 
failure because his heart was too big to ex- 
ercise the cruelties of Indian warfare ; as a 
lover, sincere, poetic and ideal, almost to the 
border line of insanity ; as a debater, candid, 
clear, oiiginal, truthful; as a lawyer, honor- 
able, just, logical ; as a writer, fair, witty, 
useful ; as a candidate, weak, but earnest and 
ever conscious of his superiority ; as an an- 
tagonist, formidable, real, full of surprises and 



26a 



dangerous ; as a victor, modest, gracious and 
benevolent ; as a man, possibly crafty, for a 
good purpose, but always natural, frank and 
winning and always commanding and con- 
scious of his higher qualifications; as a leader, 
slow, always preparing, always aware of the 
gravity of the situation, action well-timed, 
and always sustained ; as a patriot, ambitious, 
but an ambition that never crowded or even 
approached the limit of his patriotism, there- 
fore absolutely safe in all emergencies ; as a 
martyr, beautiful beyond that of saint or 
scientist, and as a memory his was and is the 
dearest, the gentlest and most God-like. 

I have seen Abraham lyincoln and heard 
his voice. This is to me a happy recollec- 
tion. From my childhood to this hour I 
have always kept every printed word which 
has fallen from his lips. It is the literary 
pride of my life that I have preserved with 
loving care all the books, w^orks, biographies, 
and printed souvenirs of this real man of 
men, until now I shall soon pass the i,ooo- 
volume line and still know that the future is 
growing with new works perennially. With 



263 

other nieii it was literary achievement ; the 
triumphs of war ; the aggrandizement of con- 
quest ; the glory of new discovery, or the 
flight of imagination in the kingdom of art or 
song; but with Lincoln it was character, 
character^ CHARACTER. This is why his name 
grows with each succeeding year. This is 
why our American schools, as well as the 
schools in foreign lands, are making the 12th 
day of February a green spot in the dusty 
road of school routine, and are telling to the 
millions of boys and girls the story of a true 
patriot, a pure man, a character beyond re- 
proach, the safest model of citizenship, the 
Agamemnon of moral power throughout the 
world. 

It is the pride of millions of men and wo- 
men to be able to say, "/ have seen Abraham 
Lincoln and heard his voice.''' Time will en- 
hance the value of everything he ever touched 
and hallow his every word. No other charac- 
ter is known to the children of men who was 
more bashful or tenderly sensitive to direct 
compliment. No man ever feared praise more 
than he, and no man ever possessed a su- 



264 

premer contempt or indifference to unjust 
criticism or slander, and no man ever lived 
who was more conscious of his own actual 
worth and his ability to use that worth for 
ihe good of others. No man at his death was 
ever so universally or so sincerely mourned, 
as Lincoln. The world wept as a young child 
at its father^s bier. His funeral train was 
fourteen hundred miles long and his mourners 
moistened wuth sincerity's tears the soil of 
every civilized land, while official history re- 
quired nine hundred and thirty pages to print 
the plain record of telegram, resolution and 
sorrow of the nations. 

He was not really an orator, as the world 
goes, yet his speech on the battlefield of 
Gettysburg, his inaugural address are terse 
and treasured classics and ranks with any say- 
ings that time has preserved from the lips or 
pen of Cicero, Pericles, Phillip or Phociaii. 
No orator ever touched the tender cords which 
sweep the heartstrings in the soul of woman- 
hood more deftly than he when he said, while 
pleading the case of the widow of the old 
soldier of 181 2: "Time rolls on. The heroes 



265 

of 1776 have passed away and are encamped 
on the other shore. The old soldier has gone 
to his rest. — Crippled, blinded and broken, his 
widow comes to me and to you, gentlemen of the 
jury, to right her wrongs. She ivas not ahvays 
thus. She was once beautiful as the morning. 
Her step was as light, her face as fair and her 
voice as siveet as ever rung in the lanes of old Vir- 
ginia. Now she is poor, defenseless. Shall we, 
too, cast her of? " His courtroom was in tears. 
His suit was won. 

No man ever held woman in higher esteem 
than Abraham Lincohi, and woman to-day is 
his loyal lover and defence, through ill and 
good report, and through her there shall be 
engravened the ideal Lincoln in the minds of 
millions yet unborn. 

If all men could be like Lincoln there 
would be no need of heaven. His pattern 
w^as formed in the Foundry of Fate, and when 
the world's greatest epoch had closed the 
mould was found to fit "the head of the cor- 
ner." See his tall form sway under a sorrow 
almost infinite as he stands at the coffin of 
his dead benefactor, Bowlin Greene, and 



266 



although a man of thirty-three, his heart 
breaks with uncontrolled emotion as he tries 
to speak the words of gratitude and tender 
eulogy which he longed to express, but in 
the agony of his soul's despair he fails to 
make a sound, and, in a burst of overwhelm- 
ing tears and groans, he leaves the scene. 
Never did a human heart offer to the dead a 
truer tribute. Language can never tell the 
depth of his feelings and history will never 
record a wail more tender or a lay more sweet 
and divine. 

When the tender life of his first pure love 
went out and Ann Rutledge was laid in her 
grave ; his was the pathetic voice which, in 
poignant grief, cried aloud as his vanishing 
reason all but left him : "/ can never let the 
rains^ the snozv a?td the stornislpeat 7ipon her 
^ravef'' A deeper anguish never pierced 
the heart of an honest man since Christ wept 
in Gethsemane. 

Oh, what a legacy, what a heritage for us 
and ours and our heirs forever after us, and 
for the world, as Time, the Saviour reveals 
his growing worth ! Oh, the great, broad, 



267 

patient, courageous man, so calm in the tem- 
pest that radicals could not rush him and the 
trumpet of war could not intimidate him ! 
His was the courage of the sublimest order ; 
absolutely perfect in faith and that faith 
founded upon eternal justice and upon his 
perfect trust in a God of justice, and in his 
own people and upon his own true and right- 
eous self. You have but to put your ear to 
the welded rail of the past and the echoes of 
forty years will come back to you, and above 
the din and confusion of that awful period you 
will hear the clear, patriotic voice of a nation 
and that triumphant song, 

"ire are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more.^^ 

This mighty surge of song is not the wail 
of despair nor the measured tone of defiance, 
but the belated and mighty response of thirty 
millions of patriots sounding the cry which 
comes from the deep, w-elling passion of 
patriotism, echoing across plain and river, 
and over hill and mountain top, that a million 
defenders invincible as an army with banners 
were coming in response to his righteous call 



268 



to save from dissolution and death the one ?ia- 
iion which was and is, and is to be^ the hope of 
the world. 

How strange it all seems to us now ! The 
world will always see him, in the National 
storm of passion and the flow of fraternal 
blood, a moral hero^ and in the blast that 
blinded, he held the helm of State for four 
dark and terrible years, and until Fate had 
become fulfillment, and then in the sunshine 
of peace he appeared in the Capital of Rebel- 
lion like a closing tableau, holding the trust- 
ing hand of his innocent boy while the fren- 
zied negro bows in almost idolatrous worship 
at his feet, and then he is suddenly lifted, as by 
some design of fatality, to the realm of earthly 
immortality. It verily seems as if Fate did 
play with dates and events, for on the anni- 
versary of the very day when the starry flag 
of Ft. Sumter bowed to the bellowing guns of 
Beauregard four years before, Beecher and his 
compatriots restored it, in the harbor of Charles- 
ton, to the breeze of Heaven, and yet before 
its folds had fairly caught the joyous inspira- 
tion and while darkness settled upon the land 



269 

that night his life went out by the hand of the 
assassin. 

No man is ever seen so tenderly as when 
humanity beholds him through the mellow 
vail of suffering and undeserved adversity. It 
is then we realize the force of the sentiment 
that, 

" Chords that vibrate sweetest music, 
Sound the deepest notes of woe." 

It can never be said that religious fanaticism 
aided him essentially in the completion of his 
world task ; neither that personal ambition 
rallied him to sudden success, and although 
success was his ruling motive, and was, all in 
all, and through it all, his guiding star, yet 
that success was grounded upon the solid rock 
of truth, and through the darkness of that 
wildest and most tempestuous night of sorrow 
and suffering he stood, the central figure look- 
ing over and above the heads of his contem- 
poraries, like the giant he was, surveying the 
end and seeing the triumphant vision which 
was to mark the closing of the most remarka- 
ble conflict which ever sanctified the battle- 
ground of nations. 



270 

It is true that there have been other patriots 
in other lands than ours, and it is true that 
patriotism has lived as a principle in all the 
ages of the past, and that there has existed 
the calm of dignity and the conciousness of 
power all through the centuries, btU there has 
7iever been bict one Lincoht. 

Other men have been earnest and other men 
have been great, and even sincere, and what 
is still more, have been kind and useful to their 
fellow men and have helped to grace and crown 
the ages, and yet, / say, thefe has never beejt 
but one Lincoln. 

He did not believe in Christ but he did be- 
lieve in a God of Justice, in a God that could 
not tolerate human slavery or injustice among 
his human kind. He had lived to learn and 
to know that his own judgment of men was 
reliable and right, and hence he gradually, 
but easily and certainly, overshadowed all his 
associates and contemporaries, and as a char- 
acter, stands alone from his rough-hewn cradle 
to his marbled tomb. In all that eventful 
journey he knew his own ability rightly and 
neither over-estimated it nor under-estimated 



271 

it, and he dared to assume dangerous posts 
of duty, and yet never flinched or doubted. 
He was therefore greater than the greatest 
man of his time. He is the Agamemnon of 
history. 

. No other man in history seems ever to have 
centered and focused universal interest in his 
every and minutest acts and personal character- 
istics like Lincoln. When standing he towered 
above his famous opponent, Douglas, fourteen 
inches, but when both w^ere seated side by side 
he was but four inches higher, so exceptional 
were his legs and arms in length compared 
with his body. 

In the Illinois Legislature hcjbelonged to the 
famous " Long Nine,^' the name applied to the 
nine members from his section, of which he 
was the tallest, and was called the " Sangamon 
Chief, '^ their combined hight being fifty-five 
feet. To them and to him were due the suc- 
cess of changing the State Capital from Van- 
dalia to Springfield, Sangamon county, in 

It is remarkable how many men afterward 
famous were associated with^ Lincoln during 



272 

his early or active life, including Peter Cart- 
wright, famous preacher ; Colonel Ellsworth, 
first to fall in war ; Colonel Baker, hero who 
fell at Ball's Bluff; Stephen A. Douglas, patriot 
and opponent ; Senator Lyman Trumbull, 
Governor Bissell, General John A.McClernand, 
Judge David Davis and others. 

He was born close to the famous Mason and 
Dixon's Ivine, about 39° 33' north latitude, 
marking the line limit of slavery and hence 
naturally conservative as to Northern and 
Southern opinions. 

He was not wholly free from the local super- 
stitions of the Kentucky pioneer times, and 
the quick and living secrets of nature, while 
real and understood, still carried a tinge of the 
marvellous, for night winds, dark forests, 
sv/elling streams, cries of wild beasts, sudden 
deaths, moaning trees, and avenging storms, 
sometimes suggest strange thoughts to the 
wisest minds. 

The well-timed hit on the lightning rod of 
the not over-consistent George Forquer, in his 
legislative canvass, recalls his clear and force- 
ful side when his opponent assumed in public 



the air of a superior and prodded young I^in- 
coln on his coarse dress of homespun clothes, 
with lack of experience and ability, and Lin- 
coln in thoughtful manner replied and, review- 
ing Forquer's follies and gullible nature as 
the prey of seductive agents, said that while 
he perhaps had many or most of the faults 
ascribed to him, he was grateful that he " did 
not have to erect a lightning rod over his home 
to ward off the vengeance of an offended God ^' 
as Forquer had. As lightning rods were just 
then introduced and under ban with the ma- 
jority of the Illinois people Forquer was 
silenced. 

The Shields incident, when Lincoln was 
forced as he thought to accept a challenge to 
fight a duel, Rafter writing the annonymous 
letter as a ividow from the." Lost Township,'' 
shows his final faith and reliance in sound every 
day man se?ise. James Shields was State Audi- 
tor, and a rather excitable Irish gentleman from 
Tyrone, Ireland, and took mortal offense at the 
letters, as he imagined as a Democrat that they 
reflected upon his personal honesty in office, 
and no amount of persuasion by friends could 



274 

satisfy him of lyincoln's intended good nature^ 
and so the challenge was forced upon Lincoln^ 
and having choice of weapons, he, on the same 
principle which in later years actuated John 
F. Porter in Congress with Pryor, chose cav- 
alry broadswords. The day came and the 
parties met — Shields, a little, large-headed 
and fiery man, and lyincoln of giant stature. 
At the final moment Shields gladly agreed ta 
withdraw if his antagonist would assert that 
he only meant to make a political point as a 
Whig against a Democrat. Lincoln sensibly 
agreed. Asked later what he intended to da 
had they fought, he said, " I should have used 
the advantage of my arms and legs and simply 
split him from head to heel.'^ 

It was nothing less than unique that upon 
his election to the Presidency he should ap- 
point as his Cabinet and constant advisers the 
very men who were his opponents in the Re- 
publican National Convention for the nomina- 
tion at Chicago in i860, and yet by that act 
he had calmed and pacified all wounded aspi- 
rations, and though regarded as a dangerous 
move politically, it showed Lincoln's just and 



275 

"benevolent heart, his far-seeing judgment and 
his cahii consciousness in his own ability to 
remain absolutely President and Commander- 
in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United 
States. 

The offense and as some felt, the ungrate- 
ful if not disloyal, conduct of his Secretary of 
the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in the 
treacherous storm and excitement of his sec- 
ond campaign in 1864, when Chase publicly 
became a candidate against his chief, again 
showed how truly great Lincoln was, and his 
words on this occasion and his subsequent act 
in appointing Secretary Chase, Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
proves him the towering political master and 
safe, unselfish patriot that he was. 

The intense honesty shown in his settling 
accounts with the Government when post- 
master at New Salem, when he months after- 
wards produced the exact amount to a dollar 
and a cent in the adjustment, and not only 
€xact but the identical coins received by him 
in the office, all laid away sacredly awaiting 



276 

the official accounting, although he had been 
sorely pressed in the meantime for money. 

His stories have been retold, repeated and 
revamped until much falsehood has been 
mixed with original, all of which were 
pointed and practical and always prepared 
and thought out for purpose and to convince 
forcibly. A I^incoln story usually carries its 
own evidence of truth and originality. Some- 
times they carried not only conviction but 
were calculated to cut or even humiliate if 
necessary. When his early antagonist at law, 
rather fresh and frothy, had talked at a rapid 
rate until he had tired court and jury, and for 
lack of facts sat down, to the relief of all, 
Lincoln in his thoughtful way said : ''Your 
honor has observed the misfortune of the op- 
posing counsel, as it is clear that he cannot 
work his mind and his voice at the same 
time, for the instant his tongue starts it goes 
so fast that the mind ceases to act. In fact 
he reminds me of the first steam vessel which 
appeared on the Sangamon river. It was 
noted for its efforts to navigate with ease, but 
it had a five-foot whistle and only a three-foot 



277 , 

boiler, and every time they blew the whistle 
the boat had to stop still." This carries the 
true Lincoln brand. 

The coarse jokes attributed to Lincoln never 
existed, and his intimates give testimony to 
that fact. In his associations with his Cabi- 
net members he gave constant proof of his 
innate manliness, and nothing pleased him 
more in business meetings or official work 
than for all to call him Lincoln. He disliked 
to be called Mr. President or Your Excel- 
lency, but felt relief to be called Lincoln, and 
always spoke to his Ministers as Bates, Stan- 
ton, Chase and Seward, though he never 
missed seeing and appreciating the ludicrous 
and funny side to all things. 

He was born a reasoner, and when a mere 
boy, after borrowing a copy of Weem's Life 
of Washington, and having left it in the log 
crevice in his Indiana home where it got 
soaked by a shower during the night, he 
agreed to work three days pulling corn for the 
close-fisted Crawford to settle the account; he 
first asked if the three days' work was to pay 
for the damaee done the book or for the book 



278 



itself, and as Crawford thought the book of 
no use, he said it would pay for the book, 
and so lyincoln became owner of his first 
actual book, and it proved a good bargain 
too ; and many a reader to-day would gladly 
pay three hundred dollars for this same book 
could they secure it for posterity. 

His check for ^5.00, made out while Presi- 
dent, payable to " the one-legged colored man 
or bearer," and which has been immortalized 
by the Lincoln History Society of New York 
City ; his letter to the little boy who met him 
on the street after he was nominated for Pres- 
ident, spoke to him and shook hands with 
him, and who was taunted by his playmates 
in Springfield afterward for claiming Lin- 
coln's acquaintance, until the great-hearted 
man wrote in answer to the boy's childish 
letter of appeal and stated over his signature 
while President of the United States, that he 
was glad to certify that he saw and remem- 
bered the boy and shook hands with him, and 
thus the boy became a hero. 

This same sincerity and frankness w^as ever 
his strength and safety, and served as faith- 



279 

fully in the diplomacy of Nations and as 
easily and verily changed the fate of the 
American Continent, for while the trained 
and erudite Seward battled nervously with 
the ponderous and lugubrious ambiguities of 
Ivord Palmerston, Lincoln had written a plain 
letter in plain and touching language to 
Queen Victoria direct, and appealed to her as 
a pure and noble woman to assure him in 
his trying ordeal against the sins of a century, 
that his efforts as a man threatened by re- 
bellion yet seeking to maintain a friendly 
:government in opposition to the spread of hu- 
man slavery, should not be injured and 
weighted by England's enmity. On a bright 
Sunday morning he received her more than 
Queenly answer by mail, saying she realized 
the burdens and dangers to his government, 
and that slavery should not receive her aid or 
influence, and that the American government 
imder his guidance would never need to fear 
from her people while she was acknowledged 
Queen of England. He had won by a man's 
sense what diplomacy never secured, and it 



28o 



was long afterward that Seward learned this 
great historic fact. 

Lincoln's was the faith that never faltered, 
and was built on truth and sense. 

Lincoln was pure in heart. He not only 
loved right, but he was grand enough to do 
right. He hated wrong and he did no wrong. 
He forgave to the last and loved forgiveness 
itself, and yet he needed little or none for 
himself. Hear his tender, fatherly voice as 
he whispers to little " Blossom " the pardon 
for her erring brother. See him as he dic- 
tates that immortal dispatch saving the tired 
soldier and sleeping sentinel, Scott, from an 
unmerited death. Think of his transcendent 
attitude in his position of almost unlimited 
power, as his acts of forgiveness fret and chafe 
the impatient generals who clamor for disci- 
pline at the expense of life, as he says : '•''Gen- 
tlemen^ I cannot take the lives of these boys who 
love their country but zvho have broken the rules 
of warfare in obedience to the demands of ex- 
hausted 7iatnre.'^^ His mantle has fallen upon 
no man. It is the heritage of America, the 



28e 



crown jewel of the world, and the hand of 
sacrilege alone shall ever touch it. 

Let not the prude or the supercilious as- 
sume to blush at his humble, or even doubtful 
origin. Let them brush their dormant intel- 
ligence and remember who was William the 
Conqueror of England, and who was Charles 
Martel or " Charles the Hammer," who saved 
Christian civilization to Europe and who 
drove back the swelling tide of Moslemism in 
the decisive battle of Poitiers. Let them re- 
member that Abraham Lincoln was a man and 
as a man was the greatest complimejit that has 
ever been given or paid to the human race^ and 
likewise that he was never the champion of 
the prude, the dude or the false ; and aris- 
tocracy has no power to either harm or 
heighten his glory now, and neither prudes, 
puppets nor apologizers have any place in the 
following of his mighty train. 

Lincoln could not sing a note, but music 
was to his soul a thing divine, and poetry and 
song may lay their garlands upon his tomb 
with perfect confidence for his character can 
absorb all their beauties and will glorify every 



282 



author. His was the hand that wrote the 
request : " Please ask Philip Phillips to sing 
again to-night ' Your Mission^'^ but do not say 
I said so." 

Abraham Lincoln is the man who gave his 
first biographer a kindly, but knowing look 
when he found that he had stated that Lin- 
coln had read Plutarch^s Lives and had turned 
their sterling virtues to his own good account 
and character, who did not even correct the 
statement in the proof-sheet ; but a week 
later when that same proof-sheet had been 
revised and was then ready for the printer, he, 
with equal kindness, and with a twinkling 
eye, informed his biographer, Mr. John Locke 
Scripps, that in the mea7itime he had read Plu- 
tarch from cover to cover and had not skipped 
even a single word, and that now the biogra- 
phy was correct and true and might be printed. 

Here is a man who, while he may have 
said boyish things, and even followed the 
rougher customs of rollicking youth in the 
sturdy land of the pioneer, yet in all the years 
of the prime of his maiihood he zvas ?iever know?i 
to say a foolish thing, A man who constantly 



283 

believed in himself and believed that he was 
being fitted for a great purpose and went on 
patiently, and not unconsciously, preparing 
to accept the highest post when the hour 
should strike. A man who was never sur- 
prised by the biggest events ; the patient, sad, 
and yet ever-rippling humorist who was great 
enough in the darkest hour to turn the serious 
incident into sunshine and laughter, thus giv- 
ing to his nature that natural and joyous vent 
from the dangers of growing and crushing 
responsibility. 

The man who never received or paid out an 
ill-earned or dishonest dollar in his whole life. 

The man to whom criticism and discour- 
agements served only as friction the better to 
propel the great engine of his mind as it 
tugged on the up-grade of events. The man 
who stood self-poised while he saw and real- 
ized that the die was being cast and saw the 
molten metal of his own wondrous history 
poured into the mould of immortality. 

Surely Fate loved Lincoln, and in her long- 
ings she gave him the deathless kiss that he 
might never leave her. 

While others quaked with fear at the gath- 



284 

ering storm he grasped the hehn with giant 
grip as the great Ship of State rode into the 
roar and crash of the hurricane and held it 
firm and safe until the lightnings had ceased 
to play and until the vanishing clouds threw 
their lessening shadows over her deck, and 
until the big waves had done their worst and 
until ripples only patted her storm-beaten 
sides and the great white harbor was once 
more in view with its sunshine and its peace. 
Romance and miracle blend in the heavens 
as the sun bursts upon the scene, for as the 
last, long peal of thunder dies away in the 
distance, and the Rainbow of Peace appears^ 
a sudden bolt from the clearing sky struck 
him dumb and dead on the deck and the Great 
Loving Captain had gone to his reward in the 
flower of his faith and in the fill strength of 
his giant manhood. 

It has been said that "God buries his work- 
man but carries on his work," and this great 
truth covers the life and martyrdom of Abra- 
ham Ivincoln, the bravest, the most courageous, 
the most useful, the kindest, the tenderest, the 
sweetest memory that has tlmsfar appeared^ i?i hu- 
man formy within the Vestibule of Time, 



285 



PART v.— ENLOE GENEALOGY. 

Following we submit in the form of per- 
sonal correspondence the result of the re- 
search of certain branches of the family. 
These letters were interchanged beginning in 
1894, four years before the w^'iter knew any- 
thing of this book, and ending with 1899 
when the publication had quickened interest. 
They are printed verbatim from original 
manuscript forwarded us by the courtesy of 
Dr. I. N. Enloe, of Jefferson City, Mo., and to 
which we have alluded in our introduction. 
We invite the reader's careful study of our 
Enloe genesis throughout for in it history 
may have an honorable Scotch origin for 
Abraham Lincoln. In a future edition, more 
elaborate throughout, we purpose to include 
a full history of the Enloes. This edition 
with its predecessors are particularly meant 
hastily to recover and secure passing data 
upon the tradition : 

Jefferson City, Mo., June 23, 1899. 
Dr. Thomas E. Enloe, Nashville, Tenn. : 

Dear Sir and Friend : — In compliance 



286 



with your request and my promise made at 
Nashville, August 29, 1898, while on my 
way to Chickamauga — will now give you such 
ready and accessible information as I possess 
in regard to the Enloe family, by submitting 
a copy (corrected and revised) of a letter writ- 
ten to Sam G. Enloe, of Mulberry Grove, 111., 
bearing date of May 5, 1894, also his reply of 
May II, 1894, which read as follows : 

Jefferson City, Mo., May 5, 1894. 
Sam G. Enloe, Mulberry Grove, III.: 

Dear Sir : — Your letter in regard to our 
relationship, to hand and noted. Am satis- 
fied we are of the same stock or family. Your 
great-grandfather and my great-grandfather 
were brothers, provided your father and B. A» 
Enloe's father were cousins (that is first full 
cousins), but am satisfied they must have been 
second or third cousins. 

Now, I will proceed to tell you my rela- 
tionship to the 8th District Congressman of 
Jackson, Tenn., and then you can figure out 
our relationship. I am next to the youngest 
son of Enoch Enloe, he the oldest son of 



28; 

James Enloe, who was a full brother to Isaac 
Enloe ; Isaac being the grandfather of Benj. 
A. Enloe, the Congressman. Isaac and James 
Enloe were both born in York county, South 
Carolina, about 1791 and 1793 respectively. 
They were reared by their half brother, Ben- 
jamin, the only brother they had, so far as I 
know. So you can see from the above that I 
and B. A. Enloe, of Jackson, Tenn., are great- 
grand sons, he of Isaac and I of James Enloe. 
They having a half brother by name of Ben, 
and the three were the sons of Enoch Enloe. 
My father was the youngest son of his father 
by his last wife, an Irish woman by the name 
of Jane McCord, whom he married long after 
his first wife's death (whose maiden name I 
never knew), and after his oldest son Ben, 
had married and had quite a family. 
Have often heard my grandfather, while 
I w^as quite young, speak of his neph- 
ews, some of whom were older than him- 
self (sons of Ben), and with whom 
he was raised. They were named Enoch, 
Benjamin, Joel, Abraham, and others I do not 
remember. His nephew Enoch', was older 



288 



than grandfather some few years, moved from 
Tennessee to Missouri a few years after grand- 
father did, which was in 1828, both settling 
in this, Cole county, near Russellville. Both 
lived to be eighty odd years old, and both 
raised large families. This nephew Enoch, I 
remember seeing the last years of his life, 
which was about 1874 (that being the year 
of his death). Grandfather, James Enloe, died 
in 1877. We always spoke of, and called this 
old nephew of grandfather's. Cousin Enoch, 
for he was my father's first half cousin. 

Will now try to give the history beginning 
further back, and it's what I don't know 
about the Enloe family away back, that in- 
terests me most. From my oldest brother, 
James, who is about fifty-six years old, 
and who has heard grandfather speak of his 
ancestors during his life, I have information 
to this effect : It appears that the first of the 
Enloe stock or family, consisting of two 
brothers named Isaac and Enoch, both school 
teachers, settled in South Carolina, having 
previously taught school or lived for a short 
time in Maryland. This was some time near 



289 

the middle of the eighteenth century. Both 
originally came from Scotland. My great- 
grandfather, Enoch, was one of these Enloe 
brothers. Both brothers, Isaac and Enoch, 
married in South Carolina and raised large 
families, Isaac's family became very wealthy 
and remained in that State. Enoch's family 
later on, say about 1808, moved to Tennessee. 
Am not able to go any farther backhand am 
not positive that I am right about names, as 
it had always occurred to me that my great- 
:grandfather's name was Isaac, until^brother 
James, about two years ago, told me that his 
name was Enoch, and he ought to know, as 
he often talked to grandfather on the subject 
■during his life-time. 

In 1808 my grandfather moved with his 
half brother's family from South Carolina to 
Tennessee — to what part I don't know — both 
he and his brother Isaac, making Benjamin's 
home their home, until they were grown up, 
or nearly so. 

My grandfather married Nancy Simpson, 
a sister of his brother Isaac's wife. Isaac and 
wife both died, leaving three sons, all or- 



29P 

phans, named Benjamin, James and JoeL. 
Ben was raised by George Leslie, who was- 
his uncle by virtue of Leslie having married 
a Simpson. Benjamin still lives in Tennes- 
see and is the father of Benjamin A., the Con- 
gressman, Dr. Thomas and Dr. James, both, 
of Nashville, Tenn. James and Joel were- 
brought to Missouri by my grandfather^, 
who went back to Tennessee after them, after 
the death of their father, and some years 
after he had located in Missouri, and he raised; 
Joel, and Wm. Leslie raised James, who was 
also an uncle by virtue of having married a. 
Simpson. James married his cousin, Polly 
Enloe, who was a daughter of grandfather 
(regardless of his, grandfather's protest), 
and moved to Texas, raised, or partly raised, 
a family, all of whom are now dead, includ- 
ing himself and wife. Joel married a Miss 
Amos near Russellville, Mo., and died a few 
years later, leaving one son and two daugh- 
ters, all of whom are still living. His son is 
named Isaac, and lives near Russellville, Mo. 
Now, as to grandfather's family, I give 
it last, as he was the youngest of the two 



291 

brothers. James Enloe was born in York 
County, South Carolina, February 19, 1793; 
moved with his brother Ben to Tennessee in 
1808, was married about 18 13 to Miss Nancy 
Simpson, and in 1830-31 moved to the State 
of Missouri, settling near Russellville in Cole 
•County, where he entered land and farmed, 
devoting most of his attention to horses and 
politics, representing Cole County in the 
State Legislature once, and Moniteau, after it 
was cut off from Cole County, twice ; raised 
a family of nine children, and died in 1877 
at his youngest son Abraham's home in Mon- 
iteau County, where he was making his home. 
His children were named as follows : Enoch, 
John S., Hugh, Isaac, Jennie, Polly, Ben ja- 
min, William and Abraham. 

My father Enoch was born in Barren 
County, Kentucky, where his father had 
moved temporarily May 19, 1814, he moved 
with his father to Missouri in 1830-31 ; 
married Miss Jane Murray in 1837, by which 
union fifteen children were born, named as 
follows : James, the oldest, now about 56 
years old ; Polly, Pollyann, and Nancy, 



292 

Thomas, Hugh, Maggie, Jennie, Barbara,. 
Henry, Enoch, Emma, John S., Isaac N.,, 
Sarah and Abraham. Polly, Pollyann, Nancy 
and Abraham died young. 

My father died in 1873, mother in 1887. 
Brother James lives at Versailles, Morgan 
County, Mo., where his two oldest sons, H. 
King and Lone, are in the dry goods busi- 
ness. Brother Thomas lives near Russell- 
ville in Cole County, and is farming and owns, 
the farm so long the home of his grand- 
father. Hugh L. Enloe lives in Russellville,. 
and is a dry goods merchant. Sister Maggie 
is the wife of A. J. Thompson, and they live 
in California, Mo. Sister Jennie on my 
father's old farm in Moniteau County, eight 
miles southeast of California, Mo., and is the 
wife of W. M. Gregory. Barbara lives near 
California and is the wife of W. H. Allen. 
Henry Enoch Enloe lives in Fresno, Cal.. 
Emma lives at Eugene, Oregon, and is the 
wife of George Cornell. Dr. John S. Enloe, 
has been practicing medicine at St. Thomas, 
Mo., twenty miles south of here, but has sold 
out. His wife and three children are witk 



293 

her mother, and he is now in New York City, 
attending a post-gradnate course of lectures 
at the Polyclinic Hospital School of Medi- 
cine. He will likely locate in the State again 
upon his return. I come next in order. I 
was born in i860 in Moniteau County, on the 
farm where nearly all the children were 
raised, located eight miles southeast of Cali- 
fornia. Graduated from the Missouri Medical 
College, St. Louis, class of 1883, located at 
St. Thomas, Mo., where I practiced till Octo- 
ber, 1889, when I sold out to my brother 
John, went to New York, spending part of the 
winter there, attending a post-graduate course, 
after which I located in Jefferson City, where 
I have practiced ever since, married Miss 
Rebecca J. Short, October 12, 1886. Our 
family consists of two girls and two boys. 
The oldest six years old and the youngest ten 
months, name Loyce, Ada, David and Justin. 
I was elected Coroner of this county on the 
Republican ticket in 1884, and defeated for 
Representative of this county in 1888. 

Old cousin Enoch Enloe's family are, as 
a rule. Democrats, while the descendants of 



294 

grandfather, with the exception of John S., 
his second son, are all strong in the Republi- 
can faith. 

Will state that I was both pleased and sur- 
prised to receive a letter from you, not know- 
ing that such a man was in existence; also 
glad to note, judging from indications, that 
you are prospering and right in politics. 
Would be pleased to have you visit me, and 
there are other Enloes in Missouri who would 
make you feel at home among them, should 
you ever see fit to pay this section of the 
country a visit. Now, take your time and give 
me all the information you have in regard to 
your family, and the same will be appreciated 
by me. Very respectfully yours, 

I. N. Enloe. 

Mulberry Grove, IlIv., May, 1893. 
Dr. I. N. Enloe: 

Dear Sir : — Yours of the 5th to hand and 
in reply will say that I am not well posted on 
the genealogy of the Bnloe family, but I 
know from the names that you give me, that 
you are of the same stock and started from 



295 

the same section of the country, York county, 
South Carolina. You say that you don't 
think that my father could have been a full 
cousin to the father of B. A. Enloe, the Ten- 
nessee cong-ressman. I will give the genealogy 
as given by my father in the history of Bond 
county, 111. He says that his father was the 
son of Isaac Enloe, a Scotsman who came to 
this country from Scotland near the middle 
of, or about the year 1750. There w^ere tw^o 
brothers, as you say, Isaac and Enoch. My 
father's name was James. He was born in 
1803 in York county, South Carolina. His 
father's name was Isaac and he was the son of 
one of the original Scotch brothers that came 
to this country from Scotland about 1750, 
and served in the Revolutionary war. My 
grandfather had a brother named Gilbert that 
never left South Carolina, so far as I know. 
He was there and still living in 1868. My 
grandfather left South Carolina in about 1768 
and came to Davidson county, Tenn., where 
he taught school for some time, and 3^011 will 
find that he is given quite a prominent place 
in the history of that county, as an educator. 



296 

He left Tennessee with his family and arrived 
in Madison county, 111., in 18 16. Moved to 
Bond county. 111., in the year 1818. My 
grandfather was a surveyor and teacher in 
this county from 1820 until he became too 
old to follow these vocations further. He 
died in this county as near as I can remember 
about 1852. He was a Presbyterian in re- 
ligious belief as most of the Enloes are, I be- 
lieve. If my grandfather ever had any broth- 
ers except Gilbert, I never heard my father 
say anything about them, and don't think 
that there were any sisters of grandfather and 
Gilbert; never heard of any. The names of 
my father's brothers were Kzekiel, James, 
Enoch, Nathaniel and Isaac. Isaac died in. 
this county only a few years ago near 75 years 
old. Enoch lived and died in Wisconsin. 
There are none of Asahel Enloe's sons or 
daughters now living. I have two brothers 
living here, I. N. and E. L. Enloe. I. N. is 
older than myself and was also in the army 
during the war, as also was my youngest 
brother, E. h. , and myself. Both rose to the 
command of our companies. I went through 



297 

without being wounded, but I. N. was shot 
through the leg, in front of Atlanta. All 
the Enloes here are Republicans of the 
strictest sect, except E. L. He is a Demo- 
crat. During the war we captured an Enloe 
near Holly Springs, Miss., and I had never 
heard of him before, but 1 knew him as soon 
as I saw him. He was named Nathaniel 
Enloe, and was a cousin of James Enloe, the 
Presbyterian preacher that lived at Holly 
Spring during the war. I have also heard 
my father and uncles speak about Ben and 
Joel Enloe, who lived in the southern part of 
the State. Ben used to represent his county 
in the Illinois Legislature when the capital of 
our State was at Vandalia, in Fayette county, 
only ten miles from my place. If I mistake 
not they lived in White county, and were both 
very large men and both used to be at Van- 
dalia during the sessions of the legislature. 
Ben would raise a row in the legislature or on 
the streets, and Joel would do his fighting. 
As Joel was a man that weighed about 250 
pounds, and was stout, he nearly always came 
out all right. I have heard my father tell 



298 

about Ben having his fun with our represen- 
tative, Col. Bentley of Greenville ; also with 
Col. McGlouthlin, of Vandalia. I think that 
Ben was there before the time of Lincoln and 
Douglas, but these times are now passed. I 
saw by the papers during the war that there 
was an Enloe that was a member of the legis- 
lature of your State, called to his door and 
shot by a band of bushwhackers, as his wife 
stood by his side. I don't remember what 
county he represented, but think it was St. 
Genevieve county. So it appears that at least 
most of the Enloes in the North were loyal 
and true. Every Enloe of the name here 
that could go was in the service. I have been 
since the war, county commissioner, police 
judge of this city, mayor four times, have been 
State delegate to the Republican conventions 
before, and am a delegate this year also, and 
I think beyond a doubt we will nominate a 
ticket that will win this fall. I was also post- 
master here for a term of four years. 

Well, wishing you success in life, I will 
close. Would be pleased to hear from you at 
any time. Sam G. Enloe. 



299 

I herewith send you a copy of a letter re- 
cently received from J. B. Enloe, Whittier,. 
N. C. 

This branch of the family I had never been 
able to trace beyond Gilbert, who was a son of 
the original Bnloes of 1750. This letter tells 
the story, and gives a pointer that will enable 
you to become reconciled, as to the meager 
reports, you have no doubt often heard, that 
Lincoln was the son of one Abraham Enloe. 

This tradition is backed with such strons: 
circumstantial evidence that it convicts. 

The tradition came to Missouri from Ken- 
tucky in 1828, and 1835, in an intensely sub- 
dued form, but was discussed in such a way 
during the war that the younger generation 
obtained an inkling of it. 

The Enloes, Leslies, Simpsons, Shorts, Van 
Pools are the people I have reference to. They 
lived at that time in Kentucky, about twenty 
miles from where Columbus is now located. 
They were neighbors also in Missouri and but 
few of the old ones are now living. The 
J. F. B. letter reads as follows : 



300 

Whittier, N. C, June 3, 1899. 
Dr. L N, E?iloe, Jefferso?i City, Mo. : 

Dear Sir : — Your letter was forwarded to 
me from Cherokee where I once lived. In 
reply to your letter I will say that I am sure 
that we are the same stock. From the best in- 
formation I have, there were three brothers of 
the original Enloes who came from the Old 
Country. They made their first stop in Mary- 
land, where one of them stayed and raised a 
family. One of them emigrated to York Dis- 
trict, South Carolina ; this was my great- 
grandfather ; I think his name was Gilbert. 
My grandfather, Abraham Enloe, came over to 
Rutherford county. North Carolina, and mar- 
ried a Miss Egerton. He afterwards moved, 
first above the Indian Mission in Bucombe 
county, then to Ocona Lufta River, where he 
resided till his death. He raised nine sons 
and seven daughters. The other brother of 
my great-grandfather and one of the original 
three went to middle Tennessee and settled. 
One of his descendants, B. A. Enloe, repre- 
sented the Eighth Tennessee District, as you 
state in your letter. Some of the Yorkville 



30I 

l)ranch of the family moved to Georgia, and 
elsewhere. In Georgia they spell their name 
Inlow. My father is the only one living out 
of sixteen. He is in his 89tli year. 

I have always heard that Abe lyincoln was 
a son of my grandfather, Abraham Enloe. 

There is a book now written that gives a 
good history of the Enloe and Lincoln tradi- 
tion. It is by Jas. H. Cathey, of Sylva, N. C. 
Yours very truly, 

J. F. Enloe. 

[J. F. Enloe is undoubtedly mistaken about 
a brother of his great-grandfather, and one of 
the original three, moving to Tennessee. This 
Tennessee immigrant was either a brother or 
cousin of his grandfather — Abraham Enloe. 
He is also mistaken about Gilbert Enloe being 
his great-grandfather. Gilbert Enloe was the 
son of Isaac Enloe and belonged to the same 
generation as J. F. Enloe 's grandfather and 
was the cousin of his grandfather and, doubt- 
less, the son of Enoch Enloe, the other of the 
original Scotch brothers. — The Author.] 



302 

I have never bad the pleasure of meeting 
Sam G. Enloe, yet I am satisfied he is an En- 
loe of the old type. In a letter dated May 
28, 1899, he states in substance, that be is 
fifty-nine years of age, six feet and one-half 
inches, weight one hundred and eighty. I 
herewith (without his permission, but know- 
ing it will not offend him) submit to you an- 
other letter recently received from him : 

MUI.BERRY Grove, III., June 6, 1899. 
Dr, I.N, Enloe: 

DEAR Sir : — Yours of the 5th received. At 
first I will give you the names and ages of 
my sisters and brothers : first, Nancy A. En- 
loe, born 1830 — 69 years old ; Mary E. Enloe,. 
born 1832 — 67 years old ; William B. Enloe, 
born 1834—65 years old; Isaac N. Enloe, born 
1836 — 63 years old ; Violet R. Enloe, born 
1838 — 61 years old; Samuel G. Enloe, born 
1840—59 years old; Emery L. Enloe, born 
1842 — 57 years old ; Harriette N. Enloe, born 
1845 — 54 years old; Eouisa I. Enloe, born. 
1847 — 52 years old ; James S. Enloe, born 
1849 — 50 years old ; Cynthy E. Enloe, born. 



303 

1851 — 4^ years old; Emily Zantavia Enloe, 
born 1856 — 43 years old. Of these Nancy A., 
William B., Violet R., Harriet N., James So 
and Emily Z., are dead, six dead and six 
living. Father and mother both dead ; mother 
died in 187 1 and father in 1884. Father had 
five sisters and brothers, and what I can learn 
of the stock all over the conntry, they always 
have been and still are, very prolific. I have 
but one child, Ernest R. Enloe, born 1872, 
and now in his twenty-seventh year, he is 
married and has two children, Loucile E. 
Enloe, and Rachel Enloe, both girls, one four 
years old and the other two years old. This 
is correct so far as my father's and my own 
families are concerned. 

Sam G. Enloe. 
I think beyond a doubt that J. F. Enloe is 
mistaken as to Gilbert Enloe being one of the 
old ones that came from Scotland with Enoch 
and Isaac, but Gilbert was the son of Isaac 
and was a brother of my grandfather Asahel, 
and uncle of my father. I have heard my 
father tell of old Uncle Gilbert many a time, 
and I have talked with a man since the war 



304 

who came from there since the war, and he 
told me that he was well acquainted with old 
Uncle Gilbert. I don't think that Gilbert was 
as old as my grandfather, but still he was old 
enough to be the father of J. F.'s grandfather. 
So I think J. F. and I are of the same brand 
of the family. I guess that B. A. Enloe, of 
Tennessee, is of the Enoch brand. There 
was during the war a James Bnloe near 
Holly Springs, Miss. He was a Presby- 
terian minister, and there were other En- 
loes lived there. We captured one named 
Nathaniel Enloe, and I knew that he was 
an Enloe as soon as I saw him, and he knew 
me although we had never seen or heard 
of each other before. We shook hands whilst 
both Fed. and Confed. looked on, but all 
noted the resemblance. He claimed he and 
Jim both to be cousins of my father. There 
are also two doctors I think living in Nash- 
ville, Tenn., and there used to be a Presbyte- 
rian preacher who lived in Murfreesboro, Tenn. 
Our folks of the old stock were all Presbyte- 
rians. The Abraham spoken of, I think by 
J. P\, was the father of Wesley, a grandfather 



305 

of J. F., that would make Gilbert J. F.'s great- 
grandfather, provided Abraham was Gilbert's 
son, which I think he was. I have written to 
South Carolina and North Carolina both for 
information, and when I get it I will let you 
know, but I guess that you have no doubt 
noticed the marked personal resemblance of 
"Abraham Lincoln and the Enloes. Most of 
the Enloes are tall, raw-boned, high cheeks 
and immense ears, all but me, and I got mine 
froze off during the war. We are all of 
Southern origin, I on both sides ; my father 
having been born in South Carolina and my 
mother, who was a Bradford, a sister of Judge 
James Bradford, was born in Kentucky. She 
was a cousin of the Mayor Bradford that was 
slain after capture of the Rebs at Fort Dillon 
in 1863. If, at sometime when you are mak- 
ing a business trip to St. Louis, you will let 
me know, I will meet you there if I can and 
get better acquainted with you. I think that 
I have given you the facts as I understood 
them, so I will close. Hoping to hear from 
you often, I remain as ever, 

Sam G. Enloe. 



3o6 

" It appears that the two original brothers 
were pioneers of South Carolina about the 
year 1750 where they both died. Their de- 
scendants being among the earlier settlers of 
North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, 
Missouri, Texas, and California, some drifting 
to Georgia and Wisconsin. 

They were possessed of more than ordinary 
physical ability, honesty, determination and 
endurance. Physical ability, determination 
and endurance are attested by the prompt 
manner in which they pushed forward into 
new country, facing strange and partially civ- 
ilized people, and poverty. As to honesty, the 
assertion goes with my convictions. 

Joel and Benjamin Enloe, spoken of by Sagu 
G., in his letter as being at the Legislature of 
Illinois prior to i860, were the sons of Benja- 
min. 

Benjamin was the old half brother of Isaac 
and James, our grandfathers. Isaac and James 
grew up wilh Joel and Ben and their brothers. 

I have often heard my grandfather talk 
about Joel's fights in Kentucky and Tennessee. 
We knew that Ben had located in Illinois but 



307 • 

did not know what had become of Joel until 
Sam G. related the characteristics of Joel and 
Ben of Illinois. Hence, I take it, they are 
the same people. 

These letters cover the ground in a way, and 
I trust they will be of interest to you. Changes 
are always occurring as time rolls on. But 
so slight in this case with our family that the 
mention of the same would be of little inter- 
est, to you. 

My family now consist of Loyce, age ii, 
Ada 9, David 7, Justin 5, Robert and Roscoe 
(twins), age 3 years. Brother John is now 
located in Southeast Missouri, at Greenville, 
Wayne county. 

Have been feeling duty bound to write you 
on this subject for quite a while, but busy pro- 
fessionally, and dreading the task, anyway, I 
have deferred it from time to time. 

This leaves all well. With kindest regards 
I remain, yours truly, 

I. N. Enloe. 



THE ENP. 



^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 933 149 3 



m 
ill 

m 






11 




wmm 

i! i 



r 

Mm 



if' 



!!! 



